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
Mainstays on Germany's prodigious Toy Tonics label, COEO close out the summer season in Bristol, bringing their disco-infused deep house to The Lanes. Sample-heavy grooves informed by funk sensibilities and a firm grasp of rhythm, COEO's pounding kicks and soulful melodies conjure a nostalgia for those lingering, joyful festival moments, still fresh in our mind.
Converting the Lanes alleys for one evening only, Bristol's own AKA Collective warm the floor with in-house residents and support from 64zoo.
Limited Tickets: hdfst.uk/E47809
ROOM 237 W/ SILENT SERVANT
Alongside the likes of Regis and Function, Silent Servant (Official) has been a driving force behind two of the 21st century’s most forward thinking and influential techno-orientated labels, Sandwell District and Jealous Gods. Amongst his label output, his DJ sets and his own productions, clear influences of EBM, post-punk and big room craft a unique style of darkly melodic, dystopian techno.
Room 237 Bristol will be bringing him to The Island for a night of dystopian techno, robotic EBM and darkly
Tickets: hdfst.uk/E44482
INSIGHT ENSEMBLE: THE DAWN OF TIME
Bristol's only adventurous classic music troupe,Insight Ensemble, return to their underground home (The Loco Klub) for a night of orchestral storytelling.
Past sell-out nights weaved multi-media soundscapes evoking winter and outer-space. This time they're turning their bows and brass to the grand topic of Creation. Expect pyrotechnics, spoken word and collaborations with The Invisible Circus. And leave your conceptions at the door: it's rare for classical to be this immersive, engaging, and playful.
Tickets: hdfst.uk/E44449
Gravy Train takes over Old Market’s Exchange & Stag and Hounds Public House for 11 hours of revelry across 3 stages on 9th June.
Headlined by the likes of Big Lad, Autobahn, Swedish Death Candy and Baba Naga, it’s actually the local artists we’re most excited for. Don’t miss some of Bristol’s finest psychedelic and noisy acts; Ep/64, MXLX, Bad Tracking, Repo-Man, Silver Waves etc.
Early-birds long gone, so be hasty:
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As electro continues its unstoppable resurgence, Sheffield’s Central Processing Unit has solidified its reputation as the UK’s most prolific and consistent purveyor of chattering 808’s and peaking synth stabs.
Since 2012, CPSmith has curated an enviable portfolio of spacey futurism and dancefloor weapons. Smith takes over everybody’s favourite basement alongside Daddy Long Legs – a man who combines sleazed-out b-boy flavours with retrospective, atmospheric synth-pop to become the golden boy for CPU.
Support comes from Eminent’s very own rising star Zobol to round off a line-up of contemporary hard hitters of an unmatchable sound.
Tickets: hdfst.uk/E44043
Listen: bit.ly/2qrUNoO
Howling Owl Records invite London's Housewives to join them at Rough Trade Bristol. The quintet are pushing post-punk forward into 21st century, injecting radiant electronics and manipulated saxophone into their monochromatic no-wave din.
Crucial for fans of Girl Band, Gang of Four and Raime’s Albini-esque take on the hardcore continuum. Spectres join them, playing their first local show in almost a year, in the recently opened record shop/café’s backroom. E B U opens proceedings.
Tickets:
DUBCULT W/ KAIJU AND KARMA
–––– Combining dubbed-out Rhythm and Sound atmospherics with tight steppers rhythms, Londoner Karma is a firm favourite from Dubstep’s new-school. With tight ties to Innamind Recordings, System and Goth Trad’s Back To Chill collective, his sets come packed full of rarities and exclusives - all cut to dubplate and acetate in the true spirit of the originators. Catch him at DUBCULT alongside DEEP MEDi favourites Kaiju, Militant Youth System and Zamwise.
Tickets: hdfst.uk/E44135
Brain-child of electronic producer YPY, Japan’s Goat are masters of restraint. Removing all context, they are in essence a minimal techno act, delivered in a barebones post-punk fashion. Via bass guitar, saxophone and two percussionists, they wield almost inhuman levels of precision and polyrhythmic syncopation. Essential for fans of NISENNENMONDAI, Horse Lords, Housewives and 空間現代.
They play The Crofters Rights, with support from the ever-entertaining The Evil Usses back after nearly 20 dates on the mainland and a new album. Presented by The Grey Area.
Tickets:
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
Part of the Guruguru Brain family alongside Kikagaku Moyo / 幾何学模様 and 破地獄 Scattered Purgatory, Minami Deutsch are leading lights of the new wave of Japanese psychedelia.
Slaves to the driving Motorik beat (central to much of the Krautrock movement), they are also influenced by the endless cyclical rhythms of minimal techno. Catch Minami Deutsch / 南ドイツ's hypnotic Bristol debut for Gravy Train at The Lanes on 12th April.
Tickets:
Followers of Amsterdam’s fertile electronic music scene will recognise Tako as a leading member of the Red Light Radio crew, and the incessant crate digger behind the seminal Music From Memory record label. Like his contemporaries Orpheu The Wizard and Jamie Tiller, Tako's collection of rare disco, vintage electro, EBM and synth must be heard to be believed. Catch him at The Loco Klub alongside Wigflex resident Blades courtesy of Continuous Movement
Tickets:
TICKET WARNING: PALMS TRAX
It’s easy to forget that this world-touring, Essential Mixing, line-up topping sensation has released just four 12” singles to date. Yet in only a handful of tracks - shared between Dekmantel and Lobster Theremin - Palms Trax has achieved more than most do in a lifetime.
He has much to do with the recent popularity of melodic, lo-fi dance music - yet his sets stay consistently ahead of the curve on account of the sheer depth of his tastes. He plays the Love International Festival Warm Up party at The Coroner's Court alongside Dave Harvey, Christophe and DIRTYTALK residents.
Tickets: hdfst.uk/E44205
FÖLLAKZOID are a South American trio at the forefront of the recent neo-psychedelia surge. Their last LP for Sacred Bones Records ‘III’ saw them join forces with German mechanoid electro-pop producer Atom™ to expand their motorik repeato-rock to levels of cyclical trance normally reserved for minimal techno.
Don’t miss their Bristol debut at The Lanes this Saturday 18th, with support from South-Western psychers Melt Dunes and Arno - Band.
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E45717
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Set It Out & Restless Nights join forces for a dualistic 14 hour marathon of local favourites; running the gamut of blissed-out house
(from Daisy Moon and Banoffee Pies Records) to the disco-not-disco of industrial heart-throb DJ October aka Malestripper.
Those who've been to recent Dialogue events will know Dare to Club is a cut above all the 'secret warehouse locations' on offer. We're already out of early bird tickets, so consider this your sell out warning!
🎫 Tickets: hdfst.uk/E47092
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Hailed as 'the next Giles peterson', Donna Leake is the esteemed resident at London's Brilliant Corners and host of one of NTS Radio's most renowned shows. Conjuring an otherworldly ambiance with cool irreverence behind the decks, Donna has made a name for herself as one of London’s most eclectic diggers. A DJ who rare-groove jazz and tropicalia from from a truly global record bag, Donna’s sets are both refreshingly high-spirited and loveably inimitable, unpredictable and one of a kind.
Catch her at The Love Inn courtesy of Midnight Shift (now onto their third event after nights with Snazzback and Loods)
Tickets: hdfst.uk/E46730
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