Pop Mutations Festival 2022: The Report

The inaugural in-person edition of Pop Mutations’ very own four-day festival serves as a definite marker from the promoters who, in the two years since their pandemic birth online, have developed into a fixture of Glasgow’s independent music scene. The festival acts as a showcase for the quality of the UK's DIY scenes, and on the whole it’s a really strong showing. We head along on Saturday and Sunday and check out some of the more DIY and experimental acts playing the festival.

Saturday 15 October

The Saturday, spent scurrying between Stereo and Old Hairdresser’s, is opened by the early highlight of Semay Wu’s set. It’s a slow build of an improvised soundscape that morphs into something genuinely unnerving. A piece-by-piece accumulated tape loop rattle serves as a rolling bed for her cello playing, the sort of skittering atonality that’s become the norm in self-important horror, but works brilliantly here. It’s a pleasingly physical style, she’s near punching its neck to rattle the strangulated tones she gets out of it, and it brings a welcome weight to a genre that often feels intellectual and detached. At its peak the set feels like a full string quartet being played on a melting CD in the best possible way. 

It marks out Old Hairdresser’s as the stronger lineup for the day and it continues to be throughout. London’s improvisational Sloth Racket are sublime, their twin saxes interweaving, making vast canyons of space for their crescendos to emerge out of. These peaks when they come are jaw dropping, be they weightless, phosphorescent glows of saxophone or the heavy, distorted hammering where they go full Sabbath. Similarly, The Ephemeron Loop, buoyed by putting out one of the most singular albums you’ll hear all year, throws herself into the performance with everything she has. The shoegaze and ambient edges of her sound are blown out live, replaced with pummelling drum machines, while the vocals and guitar sounds are scouring, coalescing into these huge cataclysms of beautiful static. 

The stream of superb experimental sets does have the problem of making the litany of indie-rock and post-punk on offer look terribly pedestrian by comparison. Kaputt, who on record manage to transcend some of the BBC 6 Music dad-ness of their peers, don’t quite connect in this setting, their necessary claustrophobia getting lost in Stereo’s rafters. It’s only the giddy power-pop of Gone West where they seem to really mean it. Similarly, Grave Goods have a coiled Wire-esque energy live that they haven’t quite caught in recordings yet, but it remains punctured by lyrics too mired in cliché. Credit should go then to Leeds’s Nape Neck, whose set, whilst utterly in thrall to the no wave bands of the past, is made to feel totally urgent and vital by the sheer ferocity and forcefulness of their energy, battering and stabbing their staccato rhythms like gnashing wolves.

The night finishes with a stunning set from Manchester’s Handle, the slippery, wonky trio whose uncategorisable output marks them as one of the finest bands to slip out of the underground in recent years. Their ability to be simultaneously incredibly tight yet feel entirely in the moment lends them a genuine unpredictability so rare in live bands. The highlight is a reworked Coagulate from their brilliant debut, In Threes, and it is truly astonishing, stretched taut from its original, sputtering and tripping in the most beautifully cacophonous way. They’re the ideal closers to the band section of the night, a perfect symbol of a lot of what remains exciting in the UK’s DIY scene.

Grave Goods at Stereo for Pop Mutations, 15 Oct by Alexis Stroemer

Sunday 16 October

Sunday at Mono is a gentler affair, more of a family fun day vibe than the abrasive edges of the night before. There’s more of a sense of bands watching each other, cheering, all working towards the same cause. It’s also a slighter bill, and as you’d expect there isn’t the same variety, leaning more towards more straightforward guitar music. Though that isn’t to say there aren’t highlights.

Current Affairs have a shy but infectiously positive energy, visibly enjoying playing a set which at its best channels the joyous distorted pop that ran concurrent to the first forays of punk. Nightshift have a similar positive energy, battling thorough early sound issues to absolutely nail their leftfield indie-pop. On record their main skill is their construction of a huddled, warm space, but in a live setting, with the addition of added strings, they gain real weight, a huge extra space opening in them. It quietly grows into one of the sets of the weekend.

However, the highlight of the day is the closing set from Sacred Paws, and the nagging realisation that we take them for granted. There was a certain inevitability to them headlining a night of a festival showcasing the best of Glasgow’s DIY scene – it almost feels too obvious. Then they walk out on stage and you remember why. They are a brilliant, fizzing entity live, their twin guitar interplay spinning about like two dogs chasing each other round a lamppost. Rachel Aggs is a truly joyous stage presence, giddy and ebullient throughout, beaming at every little guitar run or burst of noise-pop disortion; particularly Brush Your Hair is a whirlwind, the pure pop joy that underpins their technical ability coming front and centre.

Sacred Paws are an ideal way to close a festival like this; a timely reminder of everything good about DIY music communities, and a sterling cap to a festival, that as first festivals go is a great start.