2025
Our juicy 2025 programme is growing!
We proudly reveal our second wave of programming for 2025...
“fluid analogue synth arpeggios that seem to flow like water, and are structured to interact seamlessly with crisp beats, hinting at an innate knowledge of dance music’s innermost workings.”
- Electronic Sound
Higher Intelligence Agency (aka HIA), formed by Bobby Bird in Birmingham, will close the NightGarden stage with their hybrid live / DJ set of viscous electronic music.
The early 90’s were the heady days of HIA's live electronic music club Oscillate in Birmingham where he was also resident DJ and technical director. Here HIA and other emerging acts developed live performance for immersive environments, bespoke sound systems & attuned audiences.
Artists including HIA, Autechre, Biosphere & Orbital gave early live performances and Bobby describes "for me, Oscillate was about connecting with people through frequency and rhythm, like the dance hall or the dub sound system, a cultural event for an evolving community of electronic music listeners and performers."
Early HIA tracks featured on Warp Records Artificial Intelligence 2 and Beyond Records Ambient Dub compilations.
“simultaneously ancient and futuristic... wheezing bellows and whirling bleeps of a band fuelled by delicious contrasts."
- Electronic Sound
Zyggurat, an electronic music project by Pete Grimshaw on modular synthesizer, featuring Piera Onacko on accordion and Nathan England-Jones on drums perform their collective release, Broken Circle.
The name ‘Zyggurat’ derives from the inverted ziggurat of Birmingham’s lost brutalist library. Completed in 1974 and demolished in 2016, the music of Broken Circle ties in with Birmingham’s history for rebuilding and remodelling its architecture and cultural heritage - a cycle of destruction and regeneration.
The band have received acclaim for their skilful and spontaneous modular synth performances, drawing special praise for the sonic interplay between their synth work and organic flow of jazz-infused drums.
“It’s a tightly knotted thing: a loose-limbed rubber band ball of telecaster strums, cosmic harmonies and electronics; a trigger point massage where each soreness can be felt individually.”
- LOUD AND QUIET
Operating on a plane between avant-garde indie, bubbling electronica and cosmic psychedelia, Voka Gentle have an addictive, amorphous sound. A three limbed beast made up of twins Ellie and Imogen Mason, and William J. Stokes, each is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer with an imperious understanding of three dimensional sound.
With the studio as their playground at one end and a live show bursting with raw, manic energy at the other, the trio craft viscerally off-kilter songs. Voka Gentle are fast making a name for themselves among some of the most respected figures in their genre: after opening for the Flaming Lips in London, Wayne Coyne enthusiastically appeared as a guest vocalist on subsequent release WRITHING!; a record described by Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman as “the kind of album I wish that I had made” and dubbed “one of the underground albums of the year” by Loud And Quiet magazine.
“Conjuring thunderous, dystopian, raving psychosis, the experimental duo SILVERWINGKILLER yell chants over gabba kicks and schizoid synths.”
- PINDROP ZINE
Manchester based, high energy electronic two piece. Fusing world music with analogue arpeggiators, aggressive bass, live breakbeats and vocals in English, Mandarin and Shanghainese.
Inspired by human culture, science fiction and all the video games you’ve never heard of. Formed in the spring of 2024, SILVERWINGKILLER has had a fying start, taking the UK live music scene by storm after touring with London band Fat Dog and supporting bands such as The Body & Dis Fig, Violent Magic Orchestra, Minami Deutsch and Litvrgy.
“Inhabiting, imagining. Different worlds, other identities. At the surface level this reflects the twisting together of her sweet folk voice and processed electronic sound"
- THE QUIETUS
Me Lost Me delights in experimenting with songwriting, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully push the boundaries of genre.
The project of Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent who takes influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music, her work has been described in The Guardian as "stripping folk back to its bones while letting its future echoes bleed out".
With her prolific writing and extensive touring schedule, her unique sound has won much support across the musical spectrum. Dent has notably performed live for BBC Radio 3's After Dark Festival and as part of the 2022 BBC Proms alongside Spell Songs, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Voices of the Rivers Edge Choir. She received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers and was 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at Sage Gateshead.
“The psychedelic curveball you need in your life”
- NME
“Life-affirming, sun-drenched music that bursts out of your speakers.”
- Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music
Life Aquatic Band’s music brings sunshine to drab days - a mix of 70s Pop, NewWave and 2000s ElectroClash - the band sit between Graceland-era Paul Simon, DEVO, and LCD Soundsystem.
Sheffield based, LAB has built a reputation for high-octane live shows straddling dance-punk and disco - expect grooves from around the world, bubbling synths, scratchy guitars and coordinated dance routines.
They have toured across the UK, both as a headliner and as a lead support for Skinny Lister. They are at their best playing festivals, and have played Glastonbury, Shambala, Live at Leeds, Wild Fire, Y Not, Green Island, and won a public vote held by BBC Introducing to play Sheffield’s Tramlines main stage. Their latest singles YOU CAN DO IT and BRUNCH MINDSET received airplay from BBC 6 Music.
Jim Osman aka Soborgnost is an artist and researcher focusing on speculative fiction in audio-visual storytelling and experimental performance.
Bridging the space between avant-garde experimentation and the rawness of early black electronic music expect a DJ set full of the sounds of post-punk, dub, no wave, mutant disco, Belgian new beat, trip hop, proto-EBM, and industrial music, with live transitions from noise machine and dub siren!
Pure Ravers host, Anu (aka DJ Zest), is a Music and Fitness Facilitator and dynamic DJ / Producer.
They bring a freshly squeezed vibe to the dance floor with their daytime workout parties! At their playful events, party-goers of all ages assemble to become zesty and energised as they rave themselves well and unwind. By promoting a culture of invigorating daytime raving and natural highs, expect a joyous set that is refreshing and fruitful!
Rome based ensemble Looking Glass Alice deliver miasmic psychedelic pop, hailed by the likes of AIR, Cornershop and Unloved.
Following a cosmic live NightGarden performance in 2023, this time Sarah & Alfie take to the decks to present an all original set of deep cut chaos. Euphoric flips, trips and cosmic freakouts - a psychedelic, bass-heavy joyride through the outer edges of the galaxy. All killer. All new. All yours!
‘Morphogen’ is the experimental visual project of Waad AlBawardi, a Saudi biologist and artist based in Edinburgh.
Using creative programming, she cultivates an ever-evolving digital ecosystem where familiar organic forms mutate into otherworldly entities; speculating on alternative biologies and unveiling hidden potentials within natural systems.
Scylla is an audiovisual artist in the field of intuitive realtime composition and VJ performance.
She utilises modular video synthesis to create dynamic abstract tapestries & vibrant colour frequencies correlated to sound. Member of Modulate AV collective and co founder of Oscillate electronic music club, she currently provides live visuals for electronic music pioneer Higher Intelligence Agency.
+ more VJs to be announced...
Join Sorcha for a hand-building clay workshop to engage your senses - from your imagination to your hands.
Responding to our surroundings of the forest, we will learn through hand-building techniques to bring our group creation to life. The shared sculptural artwork will then be exhibited in the forest, living on intertwined. It is dried over time by the air and sun, before composting into the soil.
Join Suspended in Sunbeam in becoming re-enchanted with nature.
During the workshop, create dreamily soft accessories, dyed with nature’s palette for people who desire a life more connected to the beauty of our natural world. Harnessing centuries old practices to extract colour from plants, minerals and insects.
Cake Boi is a drag clown fabulist with a taste for chaos. Creating numbers which baffle, entertain and disgust in equal measure, this queer maverick is Birmingham’s sweetest fruitcake. Cake Boi is cooking up an extravagant bespoke performance as dusk falls and the glistening creatures of NightGarden come to life.
A resident of Queeriosity Manchester's queerest cabaret, in 2021 Cake Boi was the breakout star of Birmingham's besotted drag competition Church of Yshee and placed runner-up.
plus even more to be announced!