Following Out of the Crowd’s (OOTC) first line-up announcement in December – which featured American band A Place to Bury Strangers, Canadian collective Crack Cloud, and two Luxembourgish acts, Sunny Gloom and Fulvous – the organisers have added further acts to their musical programme.
After a brief teaser on their Instagram page, OOTC revealed another three groups that will be appearing at the festival, slated for Friday, 24 April at Kulturfabrik in Esch-sur-Alzette.
A noisy post-punk outfit from Brighton, their razor-sharp sound mixes screeching guitars with heavy bass and follows in the footsteps of some the genre’s finest acts. The five-piece released their latest album, Never Exhale, last year, showing off their keen ears for layered, luminously dark rock. For fans of Heavy Lungs, Gilla Band, and rainy days in post-industrial societies.
In their announcement post, the organisers behind OOTC are unabashed about their admiration for Slow Crush, calling them ‘probably Europe’s best shoegaze band with their wonderfully crafted wall of sound!’ High praise – and for good reason. Their latest album, Thirst, released in August 2025, is a carefully crafted cacophony, total melodic mayhem. Maybe the organisers are on to something.
How they track these bands down remains an intriguing mystery – but Hyper Gal, hailing from Osaka, Japan, seem a perfect fit for OOTC. They’re relatively unknown, if their internet footprint is to be believed, and yet their musical horizons seem fantastically vast, somehow sounding both minimalist and like a miniature orchestra at the same time. It’s glitchy, discordant electro-noise meets art-pop, as if Grimes and Colin Stetson fused into a multi-limbed mess.
Tickets for this year’s edition, which will take place on Friday, 24 April at Kulturfabrik, are already available. The weather’s usually quite nice and the quality of the bands always extremely high. If you’d like to see any of these bands live in Luxembourg, chances are that OOTC is your only chance.
