For experimental musicians, I imagine playing to crowds like those you get in Bristol is both a blessing and a curse. You’re liable to get a crowd thirsty for originality, but only because they are used to it. If you’re going to bring experimental music to Bristol, it had better push the envelope all the way into the harbour.
Bristol New Music works (and especially in this city) because it takes the endless drive for originality that runs through the Bristol music scene as a whole, but applies it to nationwide and international artists. The risk of a festival like this is a lack of cohesion. When the thing that ties your lineup together is not a genre or a scene but a philosophy it can turn people off, as it’s unlikely many people will have heard of the majority of the artists on the lineup.
Across the two nights WAX attended, what really emerged was the focus on musicianship, almost for musicianship’s sake. When talent is given a place to flourish, and platformed in ways like Bristol New Music festival achieved, you are left with music that is exactly what the person making it wants it to be, without having to worry about a thousand puce-faced Reddit threads about whether or not it’s a “proper” example of whatever genre it is they’re angry about this time.
At the opening concert, it felt as though we were slowly welcomed into the festival. Cole Pulice came first, followed by Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley, and Ethan Miller as the originally named Orcutt Shelley Miller, the latter’s familiar telecaster tone grounding the night after Pulice’s more diffuse opening.
Pulice’s 2025 album Land’s End Eternal made it into my top five of last year. That album’s central three-parter, In A Hidden Nook Between Worlds, got a fantastic live rendition, with live guitar and saxophone ornamenting a warm blanket of synth loveliness. Now, this is not to take anything from psychedelic rock, but that’s music that sounds like it’s supposed to be played in rooms where there’s a lava lamp. The music of Cole Pulice is the music that sounds like the lava lamp.
Pulice was first, followed by Orcutt Shelley Miller. The three industry veterans can certainly make a solid slab of driving guitar music, with Shelley appearing to have lost nothing of his punch since the peak of Sonic Youth. Him and Miller’s rhythm section provides a solid, groove driven backing to Orcutt’s telecaster work. While I can’t imagine this would’ve done anything to convince those who aren’t happy listening to instrumental rock that it’s for them (Orcutt is doing nothing to beat any noodling accusations levelled at the genre, although your mileage may vary on whether that’s a bug or a feature), if you don’t mind a little whiff of jazz here and there it’s hard to imagine not enjoying this.
Following the opening concert, with Bill Orcutt’s familiar telecaster tone and the sunset haze of Cole Pulice’s pastoral ambient, a more distinctly free form and abrasive evening was to be had at the Cube. The Cube encourages attention. Having a gig take place in a cinema leaves you in an environment where your only option is to watch and listen (anyone who’s been tricked into an ill-advised first date at a movie knows that they are not places for conversation).
Both sets at the Cube had the crowd utterly transfixed. Erwan Keravec played flurries of notes and harmonically rich chords to back them up that amounted to pure hypnotism, and it was easy to get lost in the high pressure sonic mire he created. At one point, he held the bagpipe on its side, allowing a second or two of rest before squeezing it in a way that produced the sort of dissonance which I’m sure a lot of less talented players produce by accident. That his mastery of the physical handling of the instrument extended to actions that more or less looked like the pipes themselves were being destroyed, only to spring back to life with Keravec’s breath, had the room transfixed.
@xcrswx took to the stage to an expectant audience following the release of their debut album MOODBOARD in December ’25, but the majority of the audience chatter I heard pertained to trumpeter Seymour Wright’s work with أحمد [Ahmed], particularly last year’s highly praised سماع [Sam’aa] (Audition). What we got was quite different from that oxymoronically more traditional free jazz, and instead consisted of a lively dialogue between Wright’s extended technique sax playing and Crystabel Efemena Riley standing at a set of drums augmented with effects and electronics. The set was angular, mercurial, and uncompromising, with the two musicians somehow sharing a totally unique sonic vision and improvising as one.
Improvised sets in a live setting are fantastic because of the constant observation and intercommunication in which good improvisation involves every person in the room. The musicians watching each other and responding to that in music, the audience watching the musicians perform and watching them watch each other, and the musicians responding to the audience’s reaction to their music, and on and on in ever more conceptually hard-to-pin-down spirals drawing the room together into a single, performing organism.
Bristol New Music festival has demonstrated an attention to detail in their curation that few others can match. There are huge swings taken here (Pulice and Orcutt Shelley Miller make for strange bedfellows as a pair of fellow Strange Brew performers), but the fairly compact lineup, and decision not to have any events overlap so that with some admittedly pretty demanding cross-town travel commitments you could in theory make every single event, just speak to the confidence of this festival’s curation, and that’s a confidence that from what I saw was more than justified. This festival matters because in a world full of festivals which will leave fans of some genres breathless and flushed hot with excitement, Bristol New Music festival is about the best attempt I can imagine at a festival aimed at those who are simply fans of music.
//Words: Maik Keefe//Photography: Adam Reid//