What's On in Bristol
Gig guide & event listingsBristol's local and trusted what's on guide.
Events in Bristol
Headfirst is Bristol's leading gig guide with a freshly launched online ticket shop. We work directly with the city's promoters to provide the most up-to-date guide what's on in Bristol you'll find. The events calendar includes all events happening in Bristol tonight and for the forthcoming weekend. If you're a musician, band member or club night organiser be sure to add your event to the Headfirst Bristol calendar.
Made famous by the legendary Lakota, Bristol's warehouse events are the keystone to the city's clubbing culture. These no-frills venues are the place to see Bristol's house and techno at it's best. If you need addmission to forthcoming warehouse parties, you can buy Blue Mountain tickets here.
Made famous by the legendary Lakota, Bristol's warehouse events are the keystone to the city's clubbing culture. These no-frills venues are the place to see Bristol's house and techno at it's best. If you need addmission to forthcoming warehouse parties, you can buy Blue Mountain tickets here.
Gig Tickets
Bristol has always had it's fair share of what's on resources. While paper-based listings magazines like Venue and forums like Hijack Bristol favoured certain musical niches, Headfirst was Bristol's first truely comprehensive what's on resource. Our listings not only go far into the future (click on a date in the calendar) but also provide some great last minute resources. If you're planning a night out at short notice please see our list of live music tonight and events listings for this weekend.
Venues like Colston Hall and Thekla usually get most of the attention when Bristol's gigs are discussed online. Headfirst aims to put the focus on Bristols smaller live music venues. Here, you can buy tickets for concerts at Bristol's Louisiana and Exchange or browse our entire Bristol gig list.
Venues like Colston Hall and Thekla usually get most of the attention when Bristol's gigs are discussed online. Headfirst aims to put the focus on Bristols smaller live music venues. Here, you can buy tickets for concerts at Bristol's Louisiana and Exchange or browse our entire Bristol gig list.
Gig Of The Week
What's On: Featured Bristol Events
On Saturday 1% of One unleash Pet Shimmers on The Louisiana: an unholy marriage of Neutral Milk Hotel-esque jangles, RICHARD DAWSON's robot folk and Animal Collective's dewey-eyed acid-in-the-kid's-party-Kool-Aid naivity.
Barely two months alive and already collaborating with arch riot grrrrrrls Goat Girl and Bristol DIY favourite SLONK - Pet Shimmers is the latest and greatest side of the Oliver Wilde bedroom-pop odyssey. We'd turn up just for wych elm though: summer-flecked indie with sporadic noise freakouts.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E52437
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What comes to mind when I say 'Bristol drum and bass'? Well UVB-76 Music feels above and beyond that: Dark, spectral and menacing; it's the local halfstep renaissance that's got increasingly more in common with the ritualistic subwaves of the Skull Disco 'movement' (yes it's time to call it that) or Felix Krone's forward Hidden Hawaii imprint.
Frequent collaborators NOISE TEST upgrade to The Island for a showcase of UVB's special home-grown strains inclluding Blackest Ever Black associate Pessimist and a joint live set (the first we've seen) from Karim Maas and Stave. This is a crew deserving of more recognition, the Island is the destination, buckle in:
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E51624
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A bold new event from Simple Things Festival - Bristol founder and Colston Hall programmer Matthew Aitken will take place in a private forest this June. For their first public outing (the event follows a private pilot last year), the organisers of Camp Elsewhere are being extremely cautious with the 'festival' label instead likening the weekend to more of a camping-trip-with-a-lineup and placing it's stunning coastal-forest location centre stage alongside a solid music and arts programme.
It's enthusing to find a tiny event with proper toilets, hot showers and no queues where an emphasis on relaxation is not at odds with a vibrant music lineup - and proof that a holistic ethos does not mean booking a bunch of worn out hippy bands... Punctuating a weekend of workshops, beach walks, talks and glowing campfires are these artists:
The Wave Pictures
Rozi Plain
Juan Wauters
Pet Shimmers
SNAPPED ANKLES
Yosi Horikawa
Breakfast Records
Leafcutter John
Alabaster dePlume
Rachael Dadd
ICHI
+ Qu Junktions Showcase
+ Ambient Forest
+ Nature Disco
TICKETS
Early-Bird £50
General Release £67.50
Kids 5-15yrs £20
Kids 0-5yrs free
Buy here:
www.campelsewhere.co.uk
Of all the bands who cropped up in the late 70s downtown NYC scene, Ut were perhaps the most concerned with actual songwriting. Much more than just scratchy guitars and skronk sax, to this day they still haven't received their fair dues, with clear influence heard in the work of Sonic Youth and Savages. Fans of PJ Harvey and Patti Smith should get a decent kick too.
Hosted by Cacophonous Sarcophagus and Fat Paul Presents at Exchange, with support from Strasbourgian freakoid digi-punk Zad Kokar and the "Alien Science Witch' Slaylor Moon.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E52310
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RAKTA and DEAF KIDS return to Bristol after both playing separate killer shows last year. This time sharing a bill at Rough Trade Bristol highlighting their different approaches to fusing extreme metal and hardcore with psychedelia and rhythmic ritualism.
Crucial for fans of Gnod’s heaviest slabs or experimental punk/metal in general.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E49976
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EDITOR'S PICK: CUE W/ VIOLET
"I want to die an optimist" Violet declares on naive's Soundcloud. It's an ethos she swears by, serving transcendental, post-rave bliss from her label's Lisboan base. Fusing the joyous, playful tendencies of HNNY with the rhythmic complexity of LONE and Overmono, the Rádio Quântica founder's ecstatic leanings have made naive an ideal home for Eris Drew's motherbeat, Octo Octa's dreamy piano breaks and Ilana Bryne's pulsating, cosmic house cuts.
Hosted by Kiia and LMR, Cue's promising Pata Negra party follows a string of well-informed bookings, including De School native Cinnaman and Desert Sound Colony.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E52021
Gravy Train invite London's Housewives to join them at The Crofters Rights on Saturday. The quintet are pushing post-punk forward into 21st century, injecting radiant electronics and manipulated saxophone (Ben Vince) into their monochromatic no-wave din.
Crucial for fans of Girl Band, Gang Of Four Official and Raime’s Albini-esque take on the hardcore continuum.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E50606
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PTS x ASTRAL PLANE X BOKEH
Psychotherapy Sessions - PTS collab with two leading labels of experimental club (LA's The Astral Plane and Bristol's very own Bokeh Versions) at Stag and Hounds Public House for a 1e strong lineup extravaganza of hard drum, jersey club and that anything-goes aesthetic fans of PTS will demand.
Loft's rhizomic drum programming and hallucinogenic sound design is the big pull with local ascendant industrial trap duo Kinlaw & Franco Franco hot in support with SHALT, DJ Roy Bar, Vio_l3t, nunu, Ye Ye and Jurango.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E51196
Buy Bristol Gig Tickets
Headfirst is the most objective Bristol gig guide on the internet. With no editorial to write, bands to interview or advertisers to please, we can focus on creating the best music listings & ticket shop this side of the Avon. From Bristol University’s music graduates playing a concert at St Georges Hall to an intimate gig at The Louisiana - we believe these events are what make Bristol special.
Bristol Nightlife & Nightclubs
Electronic music produced in Bristol has a knack of rewriting the rules and penetrating the international club scene. From Tectonic to Apple Pips to Eats Everything & Arkist - Headfirst has seen Bristol’s music scene grow and evolve since our humble beginnings in 2008.
Now Headfirst is working with Bristol’s best dance music promoters and providing a secure place to buy tickets for Bristol club nights. While Motion may catch most of the attention, Headfirst is the place to buy tickets for all Bristol's clubnights and maybe even the next Alfresco Disco party. Over the coming months we'll be adding buy tickets buttons to many of our what's on listings.
From Headfirst's Ticket Shop
Bristol Gig Venues
Nightclubs & Warehouses
Upcoming Events
PTS x ASTRAL PLANE X BOKEH
Psychotherapy Sessions - PTS collab with two leading labels of experimental club (LA's The Astral Plane and Bristol's very own Bokeh Versions) at Stag and Hounds Public House for a 15 strong lineup extravaganza of hard drum, jersey club and that anything-goes aesthetic fans of PTS will demand.
Loft's rhizomic drum programming and hallucinogenic sound design is the big pull with local ascendant industrial trap duo Kinlaw & Franco Franco hot in support.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E51196
After parties with Ishan Sound, COEO and Special Request, Also Known As collab with 64zoo to bring Hotflush signee, WHP resident and Deep Sea Frequency owner Or:la to Lakota - Bristol for their biggest (aquatic-themed) event to date.
Expect chuggy acid numbers, skippy percussive sounds and more techno-leaning four to the floor from "one of the most underrated DJs on the UK circuit at the moment" (Thump).
🎫 Tickets and info: hdfst.uk/E51647
AKA & 64ZOO w/ OR:LA
After parties with Ishan Sound, COEO and Special Request, AKA collab with 64zoo to bring Hotflush signee, WHP resident and Deep Sea Frequency
owner Or:la to Lakota for their biggest (aquatic-themed) event to date.
Expect chuggy acid numbers, skippy percussive sounds and more techno-leaning four to the floor
from "one of the most underrated DJs on the UK circuit at the moment" (Thump).
Tickets and info: hdfst.uk/E51647
A stunning 3rd birthday with Jane Fitz confirmed Restless Nights as standard-bearers for cosmic techno in Bristol. They return on Saturday with The Pickle Factory and Butter Side Up mainstay, Truly Madly.
Alongside Gene On Earth, The Ghost and Youandewan, Truly heads a new wave of talented minmal selectors. Taking over where Dopplereffekt and Basic Channel left off, his sets invite warm introspection, weaving fuzzy dub and glittering broken-beat into spacious, interstellar canvases. Support comes from Idle Hands affiliate Christian Jay and a close-knit family of exquisite diggers from his Berlin-based Meld.
🎫 Tickets:hdfst.uk/E52202
Bristol Transformed is a festival of politics and culture, exploring progressive ideas emerging from the Left at venues including Malcolm X Community Centre and PRSC. Try your hand at political scrapbooking in between workshops on putting class back into intersectionality, panels discussions on race and empire and the survival of the arts during austerity.
As we face mounting inequality, Transformed is fittingly responding to the theme People Powered Politics by providing perspectives outside the gaze of trad media and education. A welcome addition to the recent Stokes Croft uprising made by Extinction Rebellion Bristol.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E51166
From the absurdist post-punk of British Murder Boys (with Surgeon), to the cold, experimental slabs he issues on Downwards Records, UK techno has had a long love affair with Regis. His solo productions are built around the same Analog swing and raw imperfections as Jeff Mills and UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE. Yet they're mixed with the jaded wit of Brummie Britain, an industrial DIY escapism that comes straight from the heart of post-Thatcherite suburban landscapes.
No stranger to a Klubnacht, Regis' grooving, thunderous soundscapes will feel just right at The Island on Friday. A rare Dark Side event from Der Liebe, calling in Bristol's noise-techno drone merchants organchrist for support.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E51264
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SHOW CALENDAR