“It was an incredible experience that was quality throughout – every detail accounted for, every nerve stimulated! Fantastic to spend an entire weekend talking about and listening to music with people who really love it too. And getting to tell the musicians how much you appreciated them was a real bonus. A life changing experience – never been more in love with music- THANK YOU! XXX” Audience feedback

We hope each year people go away from Supersonic having discovered a few gems, often the line up is made up of names that you might not recognise just yet! – but its worth being adventurous as the rewards are well worth it.
Here are  some of the highlights from previous Supersonic Festivals including 2008’s immense performance by the  incredible Harvey Milk featuring the mighty Joe Preston – these guys blew audiences away on the Saturday night – fists in the air, tears in the eyes!!! Supersonic were proud to bring these guys over to Europe for the first time after a few years of gentle persuasion. Other great performances were by Merzbow in collaboration with Keiji Haino as Kikuri, the Danish ensemble Efterklang, comic antics by Fucked Up and the blissful end performance by Krautrock legends Harmonia.

Harvey Milk 2008

2007 saw a unique collaboration by the Oxbow Duo with Stephen O’Malley,  Justin Broadrick, Dave Cochrane & Chipper, the first European show for David Yows Qui, a near riot during Wolf Eyes and a co headline performance by Sunn0))) and Mogwai.

2007 report for Supersonic by BBC

2006 saw the thunderous High on Fire headline the outside stage whilst in the Factory club audiences went berserk for Zombi & Circle.

High On Fire 2006

Zombi 2006

Circle 2006

2005 was the infamous year of the bomb – when the whole of Birmingham city centre was evacuated due to  a bomb scare including our festival – we all had to vacate the Digbeth area but not before having witnessed amazing sets by Battles, Dalek and Tunng amongst a host of others. The much anticipated collaboration by Stephen O’Malley and Merzbow had to be postponed as did a perfromance by PTV.

2005 Supersonic short film
In 2003, our very first Supersonic Festival took place over the water at the Custard Factory, with live performances by Coil and a very early live show by LCD Sound System. Happy days!

Coil Supersonic 2003

Let us know what your highlights have been…

We are trying to keep up with technology by signing up to Twitter, feel free to follow us with all the latest news to do with Supersonic Festival and of course if Frank ( the puppy dog) does anything amazing like looking cuter than normal. http://twitter.com/supersonicfest
Twitter illustration by Ben Javens, part of his bird and pattern series. Cute dog courtesy of Frank (Capsule head of security)

First ever Supersonic Festival design by CHU

Walsall born artist, CHU ( famous for his ‘Your Mum Rang’ sticker campaign) has produced a three colour signed screen print, limited to an edition of 50, 500mm x 700mm on archival acid-free, bright white Bread & Butter 270gsm.

They’ll be available from the Dreweatts collections during February, further details here.
Designed for Supersonic Festival 2003 which saw live performances from Coil, V/VM, LCD Sound System and The Bug amongst a host of other fine acts. Brings back happy naive memories of building a stage over the ‘lake’ at the Custard Factory, until we realised we could have electrocuted the entire audience, happy days.

Supersonic Festival 2003 over water

SUPERSONIC 2009 24TH – 26TH July Birmingham UK
Crafting extraordinary events for adventurous audiences combining music, art, film & cake.

“Of this welter of well organised, wisely curated festivals (ATP, Faster Than Sound, Sonar, Greenman) perhaps the best organised and most wisely curated was Supersonic. Plotted by Birmingham promoters Capsule, 2007’s Supersonic inhabited the nexus where metal, folk and noise met.” Plan B Magazine

“Supersonic, in our opinion the best festival in the world right now”
Rock-A-Rolla Magazine

”AS British music festivals go, Birmingham’s annual Supersonic event is the best kind of mixed musical bag, a dizzying assortment of avant rock textures and Heavy Metal thunder on a bill which swings from the sublime to the ridiculous without once seeming ostentatiously eclectic.” The Wire

We are pleased to announce the first confirmations – including HEAD OF DAVID who bring their driving bombast to proceedings for the first time in 23 years – for this year’s festival, which will take place in Birmingham on 24TH – 26TH of July 2009.

Now in it’s 7th year, the event will once again take place at the Custard Factory utilising the many rooms for music, art, film & of course cake.

Additional confirmations will follow in the upcoming weeks, but the line-up is shaping up to be another extravaganza – the rather incredible former Swan, JARBOE; the expansive drone-noise of GROWING; Brighton’s prog adventure, DIAGONAL; the wild avant futuristic jazz of ZU; the stoned pysch of EARTHLESS, the Virginian sludge rock of PONTIAK, the industrial experiments of 65 DAYS OF STATIC, the immense duo that is FLOWER/CORSANO DUO, KHYAM ALLAMI and one of the finest folk vocalists NANCY WALLACE will be featured in the line-up, once again highlighting the highly eclectic booking policy of the festival.

Initial line up :
Head Of David/ 65 Days of Static / Berg Sans Nipple / Caribou / Cave/ Chris Herbert / Diagonal / Earthless /Flower & Corsano Duo / Genghis Tron / Growing / Jarboe / Khyam Allami / Master Musicians Of Bukake/ Nancy Wallace / Pontiak / PRE / Theo / Venetian Snares /Zu / ZzZ’s
Many more to be announced over the coming months

Tickets go on sale early April
https://www.theticketsellers.co.uk/

For hotel deals and to volunteer check
www.capsule.org.uk/supersonic

A piece written by Plan B Magazines editor Louis Patterson on the Guardian Blog about the Home Of Metal project. It seems has stirred quite a debate, though some people have clearly missed the point of the article  which is not saying that Birmingham isn’t a musical city but rather we haven’t marketed ourselves as such despite our rich musical heritage.

“Some cities are music cities: they have music in their DNA. Think of Manchester as you stroll along and see if you don’t get a hint of swagger in your step, your legs encased in a pair of voluminous corduroys as She Bangs the Drums filters down from some passing cloud.
Birmingham, however, is not a music city. That’s not to say it has no history of music. Indeed, from 1970s rock giants Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, through to later, less well-known but hugely influential outfits such as Napalm Death and Godflesh, the city has a history of music to all but rival Manchester. Yet, though Sabbath and Priest were certainly big bands, they were never Brummie bands, at least not in the way the Smiths or Oasis became synonymous with Manchester. Why?”

Read more here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/05/birmingham-rock-metal

This is one of the comments from the article:

“This may come as something of a shock, but Black Sabbath are a 100 times more influential than The Smiths or Joy Division ever will be. I live in the US and they are feted as gods by folks here…It’s a bloody inspired place.”

Saturday 7th of Feb
Waterhall Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
11am – 4pm
Free event

11am – Doors open
Kerrang! Radio DJ in conversation with:
11.30 am –  Pete Turvey
http://www.rockinamoeba.co.uk/
Grew up in the mid/late seventies Birmingham metal scene. Lots of memories and memorabilia.

12.30 – Mike Clement
Mike Clement – “fell” into the rock and roll industry in the mid seventies whilst still at college in Manchester. Mike became a lighting designer working with a diverse range of artists in the late 70’s including Roy Harper, UK Subs, Wah Heat.
After a drunken encounter with an old friend, Ian Wilson from Sad Café, at local watering hole Mulberries, he was persuaded to take a new career direction looking after backline, taking up the challenge he spent the next 4 years working with Motorhead, looking after Lemmy and Wurzel for his sins! Early 1990 he got a call to be guitar tech for Sabbath and has been there ever since…”

1.00pm Chris Phipps – Music Archivist
Chris Phipps is a Birmingham born documentary maker, archivist and music historian. His credits include  ‘Motor City Music Years’, profiling the rock history of the West Midlands, the definitive ‘Bob Marley – Time Will Tell’ biopic, an award winning history of North England rock ‘North Stars’ and countless Top 100 TV formats.  As journalist, radio and TV producer he has tracked the evolution of blues-rock, metal and the NWOBHM for over 3 decades.

As an archivist he has worked closely with director Dick Carruthers on ‘Metal–Louder Than Life’ DVD and sell out  ‘Zeppelin at 40’ shows all over the UK.
He was also the assistant producer of Channel 4’s controversial music show The Tube. Enabling TV debuts to bands ranging from Fine Young Cannibals to Twisted Sister.

Followed by a screening of Motor City Music Years
4pm Museum closes
6pm – till late Drinks at Scruffy Murphys

Just in time for our next Home Of Metal event which is due to take place in the Waterhall Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 7th of Feb 11am – 4pm, a short taster film put together from our previous open days at Wolverhampton Art Gallery as part of Hello Digital (1000 in attendance) followed by an evening event at New Art Gallery Walsall  with a special live performance by Einstellung.
Special guests for Saturday 7th will include music archivist Chris Phipps, producer of the documentary Motor City Music Years, and assistant producer of The Tube. He will be in conversation with Johnny Doom at 1pm, followed by a screening of his documentary which profiled the rock history of the West Midlands.

Photographer Barry Lewis will also be at the museum taking photographs of Metal fans for the Guardian Saturday Magazine – some of you may remember him from his White Tent project which he set up  with Rhubarb Rhubarb in the Bull Ring.

The film was created by Ella Turner, Matt Taylor and Martin Poyntz-Roberts and of course the project could not happen with out the hard work of the our volunteers.

The legendary Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, whom we had the honor of meeting and interviewing at the end of last year when he was given a walk of stars, has kindly agreed to loan us one of his custom guitars for our next Home Of Metal event and also has given us his full support for the project.

“I’m really proud to be a Brummie and to call Birmingham my home, that’s why I’m supporting the Home of Metal events and message.  Your surroundings and experiences influence your music so it’s important for people to know where that music came from!“

The next Home of Metal Open day takes place on Saturday 7th of Feb at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in Waterhall, 11am – 4pm.
Fans are encouraged to bring along related memorabilia, photos and stories to be recorded and digitised to add to the archive. Its a free event all are welcome.

Above photo of Tony Iommi taken by Steve Gerrard, whose photos of Metal fans will also be on display on the 7th of Feb.