Rewire 2025: 6 Key Performances
The Hague brings the best in weird music to justice over three thrilling nights
Edition 55 sees Rich Walker head out to The Hague for the 2025 outing of Rewire, a four day avant garde music festival in the heart of the Netherland’s international justice bringing city.
“I’ve had three meals today and they’ve all been bread” deadpans aya from atop one of the podiums that make up the stage for her astonishingly brilliant live show. It’s a comment that hits deep. Having been in the Netherlands for a couple of days now our bread, cheese, and (natural, naturally) wine consumption has been through the roof; the Dutch really love bread and cheese. Not a bad thing of course, not at all. Bread, cheese, and wine are as good a three items to live off as most (a potato bread we have at Basaal, a smol plates restaurant overlooking a delightful canal just outside the immediate city centre, is one of the best things we eat over the course of our five days here). It would be really nice to have something lighter to eat at some point though.
The reason we’re in the Netherlands is for Rewire, the much lauded avant-music festival in The Hague, home of war crimes and Vermeer (shout out to the sheer amount of tat that The Girl with the Pearl Earring can appear on). It might not be number one on a must do city break, but having spent 5 days here I can heartily recommend it - great food, great art, a beach within 20 mins cycle, delightful quaint streets, the chance of seeing Netanyahu around the International Court of Justice (as if) - it provides a lot, and is enough off the beaten tourist trap trail that you can get proper up close and personal with the previously stated Vermeer painting without a crowd around you. I’ve watched Rewire from afar with jealously over the years, and so with an incredibly strong line up on offer took the plunge into a world of off-kilter weirdo music, exceptionally dressed hipsters from across Europe, bread, cheese, and wine. We saw plenty across the weekend, some astonishing, others good, some leaving us wanting more. Here are six key performances for your reading pleasure.
aya @ PAARD 1
It was Friday. Day 1. Having had a delightful if somewhat chilled start to the evening with the doom laden saxophone stylings of Colin Steton and the ambient jazz noise of Nala Sinephro, we were looking for a jolt to get us going. aya provided that jolt, and then some, with a next level performance that I don’t think was quite matched over the entire weekend. Having just released the astonishingly good album Hexed!, this is one of her first chances to bring its mangled, manic energy to a crowd, which she does with a characteristic mix of wit, sincerity, and utter mayhem. It’s a performance that grabs you and never lets you go, aya a storm of energy across various podiums across the stage, initially dressed in a hoodie complete with a backpack, these items are shed across the show until she’s left in a torn up dress, pretty much representing the state I’m left in at the end. Hexed! highlights ‘Off to the Esso’, ‘The Names of Faggot Chav Boys’, and ‘Navel Gazer’ sound incredible pummelling through the impressive sound system, the twisted lights and slogans scattered across the plastic sheeting backdrop matching the fervent energy coming off the stage. There are DJ interludes, references to Huddesfield, elements of screamcore, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Slipknot…a wild, fucked up, thrilling ride of a gig that showcases a unique, thrilling talent. It’s exhausting, in the best possible way. Followed by the post-ironic stylings of hyper-dance duo Two Shell, it makes for quite the one-two punch for Friday peak time.
Moin @ PAARD 1
It’s absolutely rammed for this Sunday evening show, there’s no room left well before the band come on, and we feel lucky to have got a vantage point on one of two balconies in this smart venue. Moin are flying off the back of their latest album You Never End, and having DJ’d a couple of nights ago as Raime, they’re ready to go again here, guitars in hand, joined by the brilliant Valentina Magaletti on drums (who we’ve already had the privilege of seeing tear up a drum kit with Holy Tongue and Shakleton the evening before). They rattle through their electrifying brand of post post-rock, featuring guest spots from album vocalists Coby Sey, Sophia Al-Maria, and Olan Monk, a family affair of doomy, groove laden guitar rock propelled by Magaletti’s thunderous beats. The reaction they get is quite unlike anything we see all weekend, deafening in its appreciation from crowds that have been quite polite outside of the dance business, which is heartwarming to witness. Moin are the best band in the UK at the moment, possibly in the world, and this felt like the start of a special run of shows.
Kali Malone @ Grote Kerk
It’s 9.30pm on Saturday night and we’re queuing up outside the ginormous Grote Kerk, a huge cathedral-esque church in the very centre of The Hague, with a can of far too sweet pińa colada cocktail in hand, to make sure we get a seat for Kali Malone. She’s presenting her incredible organ drone album All Life Long in this magnificent venue on an organ that originated in 1769. To say we’re giddy to be enveloped by her music in such a stunning setting is an understatement, and the wait for her to start is almost too much. As a hush descends over a crowd crackling with anticipation, a choir emerges to the right of the choir to begin its incantations, and the doubts start creeping in immediately: it’s far too quiet. ‘That’s fine’, I think to myself, ‘that fuck off organ is going to kick in soon’, and indeed it does…but no, it’s still extremely tame. For this music to have impact it needs to knock you out with its presence, the drones need to reverberate through your very body; alas, this does not happen, and renders the show a very nice set of slow moving chords played quietly whilst we stare at a very impressive old organ. We get a bit tetchy and leave halfway through, disappointed, but happy in the knowledge that we’ve made the right decision, with other delights to be found way into the night.
Lord Spikeheart @ Concordia
We follow up the disappointment of Kali Malone with some frites and a trip into the unknown at Concordia, a beautiful old building that feels like a community hall, a single three sided balcony overlooking a square space (they love balconies here! I love balconies - you can see! From everywhere! Petition for three sided gig balconies!). I’ve heard a bit of Lord Spikeheart along the way, enjoyed his black-metal rap in small doses but have never taken a full gulp. I’ve also heard he’s a riotous live performer, and having been sat next to him in a hip coffee shop earlier in the day, it feels like our duty to head out at 12.30am to see him. And fuck me if he doesn’t absolutely blow us away. From our comfortable spot on the left hand side of the balcony, we watch a one man whirlwind of a performance, Spikeheart with the crowd in the palm of his hand, commanding the moshing throng on the floor below to his every whim (a very cool looking ‘parting of the seas/smash into each other like waves’ bit is a particular highlight). His screamo-metal-rap is enthralling live, propelling more and more energy into the crowd as he bounces across the stage, into the crowd, thrashing on the floor, it’s electrifying to witness. We’ve had a few wines and feel brave enough to join in, barrelling down the stairs into the pit below, throwing ourselves around with the sweating kids and Spikeheart himself for the last couple of careening songs. Mates hug, strangers hi-five, piss-wet t-shirts are discarded, as Spikeheart walks away from the comradery carnage he’s caused. A lesson in giving everything, and giving a crowd everything they need.
Panda Bear @ PAARD 1
It’s a noticeably older crowd for Animal Collective’s busiest member (quite the achievement), but the kids are still out in force too. Maybe the most influential ‘alternative’ act of the millennium, Panda Bear treats us to a career spanning set of krauty-psych-beach-boys-pop complete with twisted Aphex adjacent visuals and far out lights. It’s a proper show, and maybe the most emotionally engaging thing we see all weekend. From the Cindy Lee guitar jangle of recent single ‘Defense’ to the shattering beauty of a beefed up ‘Selfish Gene’, it’s a masterclass in songwriting perfection. What’s more, we get ‘Slow Motion’ from 2011’s Tomboy, and a moustache on Panda Bear’s impossibly youthful face. If you’re being picky, there’s no Person Pitch cuts, and a little voice inside our heads wanted him to bosh out ‘My Girls’ or ‘Banshee Beat’, but we’re splitting hairs here; Panda Bear is a musical treasure, a rare beast who’s managed to forge a career out of crowd-pleasing weirdness, and it’s an honour to see him on top form here.
more eaze & claire rousay @ Lutherese Kerk
It’s Sunday, we’ve come off the back of a big one/two of Panda Bear and Moin, and we’re a little physically and emotionally shattered. We file into the pews of the small Lutherian church off the high street to be utterly soothed by more eaze and claire rousay presenting their new album No Floor as the dusk light turns to night time. It’s a ridiculously beautiful show, rousay on piano and electronics, more eaze on all the instruments including a violin, twinkling and gurgling into the stately ether, with just enough sand paper edges to keep it from being just another ambient glaze. It feels human, organic, natural. An utter delight on a Sunday evening, the NHS should prescribe this for the Sunday scaries.
What we saw in full:
Friday
Colin Stetson
Nala Sinephrio
Aya
Two Shell
Djrum
Saturday
Holy Tongue
Able Noise
Erika de Cassier
Kali Malone
Lord Spikeheart
Sunday
Molina
Panda Bear
Moin
More eaze & claire rousay
Eiko Ishibashi
As you may be aware, it’s 2025. As such we have new playlists for you to listen to and follow featuring all the tracks we’re loving this year. Click here to listen on the good ship Apple, and click here for the damned hell hole of Sp*tif