Performers
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Yard Act
Yard Act formed in Leeds late 2019 when Ryan Needham found himself temporarily living in James Smith’s spare bedroom. bedroom. Settling into a system of programming, looping and layering, the alchemy between the two created a base from which to build their complex and ever expanding narrative world. With just three hometown shows under their belt, world events intervened, ut rather than letting the pandemic derail them Yard Act set up their own imprint, Zen F.C. and across the course of 2020 and into early 2021 released four increasingly coruscating, hilariously dark singles. Subsequently expanded to a four-piece, joined by Sam Shjipstone (guitar) and Jay Russell (drums), their debut album “The Overload” was released in January ’22, landing a number 2 album in the UK, a Mercury Prize nomination, and making them one of the most talked about bands on the planet.
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Do Nothing
Having known each other since childhood, Chris Bailey, Kasper Sandstrom, Charlie Howarth and Andrew Harrison started making music as teenagers living in Nottingham. The four experimenting with different names before settling on Do Nothing in 2018. A pair of EPs, 2020’s Zero Dollar Bill and the following year’s Glueland, established Do Nothing among an exciting crop of new British bands huddled loosely under the post-punk banner. Chris Bailey had big ambitions for the first Do Nothing album, though, and even in early interviews was stressing the importance of always evolving. This desire to change, twinned with the time-freezing pandemic that impacted early stages of writing, raised more questions than it elicited answers for the singer and chief songwriter. The resulting feeling was that of a creative stutter; a disconnection between intention and end product.
The debut album Snake Sideways was released in 2023. Ten tracks that interrogate feelings of tying identity to a vocation, self criticism and the precarity of dreams. Sunday Times hailed them "smarter than your average band" and the record described as "a truly impressive debut" by Dork and "a great debut album" by Clash.
