The Weird and the Wonderful:
Future Days Festival 2025
Charlotte: Established in 2022, Future Days is an alternative day festival located at The Crossing in the heart of Digbeth. Helmed by local promoters, This is TMRW, the festival offers a varied selection of 6 music regulars and up and coming local bands. While the festival itself is relatively young, in the four years it has been running, it has established itself as one of the most affordable, exciting, and interesting festivals in the city. Having attended in previous years, it’s not hard to understand why people keep coming back for more.
Jacob: Unfortunately busy for the festival’s opening, we joined midway through, diving right into a teeming pool of proper filth and fun.
One key element to the festival’s success is its eclectic lineup. While not pushing the envelope quite as far as Supersonic, Birmingham’s premier underground music festival, Future Days provides a healthy assortment of indie favourites, lesser known experimental acts, and international artists. The headliners this year being Irish post-punk band, Gurriers, the masked dancer, Lynks, and indie-rock trio, Honeyglaze.
The Weird on Purpose stage is another highlight of the festival. Perfectly slotted between mainstage acts, festival goers need not fear missing out on any music. Located in the main thoroughfare, it is hard not to be drawn in by the bands as you pass by, even with the food stalls outside calling my name. A lower, more intimate stage, sporting bands full of intensity, created a passionate community atmosphere. Every act garnered a large enraptured crowd, highlighting the quality of the chosen lineup and bands. From experimental electronic act Monoxide Brothers, to alternative, midwestern leaning, bands like Pip and Ollie Cook, to retro indie outfits Lobby and Fergy LH, the Weird on Purpose stage provides an excellent entry point into the thriving and varied Birmingham music scene.
A band we were both sadly too busy in the day to see were the Canadian Punk band PISS, who opened Future Days’ main stage. When we arrived, we scouted for responses to the band’s set. Harry Price, bassist of Gingham, described them as:
“Exactly how a band called PISS should sound… really loud and angry… frantic, and… I don’t even know!”.
Audience member Conor suggested the band’s set…
“Felt like watching someone getting crushed and then reborn”.
At the merch stand, I got to see the band in person, made up of four delightfully sweet members who had nothing but gentle kindness to impart. The contrast between audience responses and the band’s demeanour only accentuated my FOPO (Fear of Pissing Out).
While helmed by some big names, the main stage did have its issues. Starting the evening segment off with the contagiously energetic Man/Woman/Chainsaw, followed by the more mellow Honeyglaze, felt like a mistake. The heightened energy in the room suddenly became static in the change over between bands, something that a simple lineup swap could have avoided.
I’d arrived just in time for Honeyglaze, so didn’t get the same whiplash as Charlotte. Instead, I felt the joy of seeing a band I really admire take an even bigger crowd than their last time in Birmingham, which saw them at the second room in The Hare and Hounds in April this year. While skirting the perimeter of the crowd, taking photos of my camera screen to make up for a missing SD card (see below), I was slightly disappointed with the crowd’s enthusiasm – though the shadow of Man/Woman/Chainsaw was sure to have had an effect. One passer-by remarked that the band reminded them… “Heavily of low“ which Charlotte wasn’t too happy to hear.
Lynks too, felt off in their lineup placement. What should have been a party starter, to me, felt almost like an intermission before the main act.
What I did enjoy about Lynks’ set was how it translated to the big stage. I’d seen a couple clips of her performing in the past, worrying about their less-than-energetic style of singing as a crowd-pleaser. God, how dumb I can be. The jagged edge between Lynks’ high octane beats and his toned down vocals made for something both dryly funny and apt in the city of ‘not shit’ness.
Lynks’
Despite these changes in momentum, the performances on the main stage were engaging and held their own in the genre bending line-up. The incredible lighting and live video work created a fantastic atmosphere that made the acts feel larger than life.
Gurriers’ set matched the visceral energy needed for a close in such a lush industrial venue. I’d waited to hear them in person, only hearing grapevine talk of the thunder they struck each stage with, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Gurriers felt like the perfect climax to the night. The mosh pit, that had been toying with the idea of forming throughout the festival, finally broke its bows, especially when the band’s crowd-surfing bassist entered the floor.
Overall Future Days is one of Birmingham’s best up and coming music festivals. With an always interesting and intriguing lineup, Future Days provides fans with an indulgent night of music for half the price.
Future Days might officially give me the pep I need to convince myself into the world of Supersonic next year. Within the mesh of crowds, a wonderful array of Birmingham’s best that extended into the afterparty at Pan-Pan, I’m keen for the prospect of what an even heavier night of music could conjure up in the spirits of Birmingham.
Gurriers’ bassist, eyeing up the mosh they were soon to visit.
To find out the next headliners of Future Days, make sure to follow them on Instagram.
Special thanks to Concrete writer Chloe Allen, who lent Jacob her SD card and half a burger over the course of the night.