Offie Mag

It’s an overcast Saturday afternoon, and Birmingham feels like it’s about to burst.

A five-minute walk from New Street Station lands me in Grand Central Square, where I’m hit with that feeling of being in a city both familiar and a bit off-kilter.

Architecturally, Central Square feels chaotic, like a poorly packed-away Playmobil set- where the pieces of numerous worlds have been chucked into one big box and then indiscriminately placed back out onto a cramped bedroom floor.

There are your usual upmarket fast-food chains flying high the flag of mediocrity, the Saturday market selling everything from pig heads to toy ponies, free sample queues, and a wedding ceremony at the impressive 12th-century Parish Church, all situated under the watchful eye of the monolithic Bullring shopping centre, one of Europe’s largest.

Amid the multilateral chaos of football fans, wedding-goers, market stalls, and retail warriors, it takes a moment for my senses to adjust to this unsettling soundclash playing out before me: the church’s wedding bells have syncopated with the generic retail house music being pumped out of the sparsely populated fanzone in front of it, creating this surreal mishmash that weirdly just about works—an ode to tradition and commercial enterprise, perhaps.

Naturally, where this was my intended segway into the music side of things, Supersonic Festival being the very reason for my weekend residence in the ‘workshop of the world’, it feels important to point out that the city, and in particular Digbeth is under duress from what feels to be an aggressive phase of urban redevelopment. Consequently, this year, Supersonic finds itself as engrossed in the politics of place as it does the music side of things, which I promise I will, in a moment, get to.

But before doing so, it feels only right to point out that, quoting myself here, “an ode to tradition and commercial enterprise” is the exact kind of lip-service sentiment you’d expect to see plastered across a glossy property development brochure or emblazoned on the hoardings hiding the rubble of what used to be. The shifting identity of Digbeth is tangible; these newly erected luxury flats punctuating the Brummie skyline foreshadow a future already taking shape, signifying the partial erasure of the city’s proud industrial past—ghostly open spaces, historical grounds come real estate, soon to be property of the highest bidder.

There’s a lingering sense that this might be Supersonics’ final year in Digbeth, a place it has called home for over two decades. The property developers who own the warehouse where the festival is situated this year letting down the organisers at the very last minute, resulting in a frantic search for an alternative location, or of course, the very real possibility of cancellation.

It is then a real testament to the esteem in which the festival is held within the local community that the organisers were able to acquire the impressive O2 Institute, a listed Methodist church that dates back to the 1900s, nearby as one of two locations; the other, the festival's main hub, being XOYO—no doubt a familiar name to Londoners, infamous for one particular bouncer's Russian roulette entry scheme.

Bar a few half-hearted pat-downs and the chic ‘Love is everywhere’ LED light bar drilled into the wall, you’d be forgiven for thinking XOYO hadn’t always been Supersonic’s main hub. The miscellaneous stalls and stands offering band merchandise, modded guitar pedals, vinyl, and samosas, among all else, integrate seamlessly into the mediaeval-feeling corridors of the place.

From a curation point of view, what makes the Supersonic experience so enticing is its refusal to abide by the ‘playing it safe’ formula of the British festival circuit, where ‘we know what you like, and you know what you’re getting’ 6-pound Redstripe ethos holds precedence over all else.

The exquisite curation had attendees covered on every level. Over the two days of music, I counted as many as twenty different musical genres, from black metal to grime, to traditional Celtic music and classical, no stone was left unturned.

While all of this year’s performers brought their own unique energy to proceedings and contributed to this general feeling of spellbinding excitement for the avant-garde underground, I have taken away with me, I have nevertheless assigned myself the impossible task of picking my top three standout performances.

Senyawa

An Indonesian duo who, in their home country, hover precariously between being too traditional for the youth and yet too contemporary for the older generation, land incredibly well at the O2 Institute on Saturday afternoon. Billed as the weekend’s must-see band, according to word of mouth among festival-goers, I admit I had no prior knowledge of them beyond a quick Spotify search that listed them as contributors to the Red Dead Redemption 2 soundtrack. However, their enthralling hour-long set is a far cry from the Wild West, shifting through unknown techno terrain without any real sense of catharsis. Vocalist Rully Shabra Herman uses his whole body as an instrument, singing with his throat at times, letting out guttural roars, and slamming his fist into his chest for cadence. Meanwhile, his bandmate Wukir Surkiya slashes away at a homemade bamboo instrument, creating a sound that feels like a bass, violin, and harp, sweating it out. Simply referred to as the “bamboo spear” or as the “Bambu Wukir”, in an ode to its creator, the instrument bears a shape reminiscent of the spears used as weaponry during Dutch colonial rule. Its sound is somewhere between industrial and ritualistic—enthralling and often surreal in its impossible inimitability.

The Body & Dis Fig

Saturday night saw a coming together of two big guns in the industrial alt-noise world for an hour of dark, claustrophobic soundscapes that morphed metal, electronic, and industrial music into highly refined chaos. It was loud as hell, with occasional sharp feedback ringing out, leaving one to wonder whether it was a technical glitch or part of the distorted electronic setup. Equal parts moving and devastating, Berlin-based producer Dis Fig prowled the stage and audience as if in the throes of an electro exorcism, her primal screams pairing with Chip King’s demented cockerel howls from behind his desk of modular synths. The intensity was overwhelming yet exhilarating in equal measure, hitting that sweet spot between challenging and rewarding. It felt like some kind of shock therapy.

After the set, I caught up with Chip King, who was manning the merch stall. I was struck by how laid-back he was for someone who had spent the better part of twenty-five years making some of the heaviest, most challenging music I’ve come across. In a self-deprecatory, humble genius sort of way, he expressed a certain bafflement regarding the darkness of his own lyrics, not entirely sure where they come from. When not performing, he sees himself as a “chill guy” (or something along those lines). This left me reflecting on the set: while it felt like shock therapy, the lines blurred on who was on the analyst’s couch and who was in the therapist's chair—it could just as easily have been us, the audience, or the artists performing either role.

This experience taps into the fundamental power of music, especially in such raw forms as The Body and Dis Fig's offering. It’s also what makes Supersonic special: the audience isn’t treated as a commodity or cash cow to be squeezed for every last penny; rather, they are integrated into the festival's very fabric. From the workshops to the intimate performances and the warmth of the festival staff, this positive energy permeates the atmosphere. You can really sense that the artists buy into this ethos, with established names like Maxine Peake, Tutti Fanney, and Brum techno legend DJ Surgeon all making appearances throughout the weekend.

Mohammad Syfkhan

That Mohammad Syfkhan should close the festival feels, in many ways, poetic. Clad in a full suit and tie, he sings in his Aramaic mother tongue, accompanied by his bouzouki (a stringed instrument similar to a Greek lute). His hypnotic playing style blends a variety of influences—from traditional North African folk and Dabke rhythms to Turkish psychedelia—creating a wonderful amalgamation that embodies the spirit of Supersonic. From the very first chord, Syfkhan captures the audience, bringing joy that transcends the aches of Day 3 and last-train worries. It’s infectious; the pacing and rhythms are so joyous that even security guards find themselves caught up in the trance, using the space between audience and stage to express themselves.

I learned later that Syfkhan’s story is one of trauma and survival. In 2013, ISIS militants in Raqqa murdered his son in the most brutal of ways, leaving Mohammad and his family with no choice but to flee the place they had called home for over thirty years, taking “the road of death” across the Atlantic surviving rubber dinghy crossings, they eventually made it to Dublin, where Syfkhan’s music, transcending the language barrier, found a home. He describes his music as a means to “forget a little of the pain of the past.” For those under his hypnotic rhythmic masterclass, that “little” became a lot.

Words by Ollie Ruis. Photography by Alice Needham.