Pitchfork's Dalston Takeover Is a Triumph of Curation

From Working Men’s Club to Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, a single wristband and two floors of EartH made for the best night of Pitchfork Music Festival London.

Pitchfork Music Festival London returned for its sixth edition last week. Sixteen venues across the capital, from grassroots favourites like Café OTO to prestigious cultural institutions like the Royal Festival Hall, have played host to a carefully curated lineup of exciting talent.

Unlike a festival in the traditional sense, however, most performances are individually ticketed, making the week feel more like a sprawling concert series than a conventional festival. Saturday night’s Dalston takeover is the exception. With a single wristband granting access to six venues scattered across one of East London’s most vibrant creative pockets, it offers something closer to the festival experience in its truest sense.

Despite the freedom afforded by the wristband, I must confess that my coverage of the evening is confined entirely to the two floors of EartH. Between its iconic upstairs amphitheatre, a vast converted cinema, and its basement hall, cleverly designed to bring you right into the thick of the action without leaving you packed in like sardines, EartH is easily my favourite venue in London. I did make an attempt to catch Sex Mask’s set at The Shacklewell Arms, but the venue had already reached capacity, with a lengthy queue snaking down the corridor and into the adjoining pub. From what I could hear through the wall, though, it sounded like an absolute hoot.

Pictured: Mandy, Indiana | Credit: Sam Huddleston

The first band I catch are Yorkshire synth-punk outfit Working Men’s Club. Whether it’s down to my own affection for the space or the commendable instincts of the festival’s curators, I can’t quite say, but every act I see feels perfectly suited to its surroundings. The low ceilings and intimate confines of EartH Hall provide the ideal setting for the dark, hypnotic pulse of Syd Minsky-Sargeant’s outfit, allowing their brooding electronics and relentless rhythms to cut right through you and send shivers down your spine.

Up next in the same hall are Anglo-French noise-rock outfit Mandy, Indiana. During a recent BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast, DJ and producer Daniel Avery praised the band for achieving something that so many of their contemporaries struggle to pull off: making politically charged punk music that feels genuinely inventive and futuristic without compromising its convictions. As their set builds towards its crescendo, I begin to understand exactly what he means. The interplay between electronic drum pads and live percussion produces a dizzying assortment of rhythms that feel unmistakably punk, yet remain thrillingly unpredictable. Enigmatic frontwoman Valentine Caulfield spends almost as much time among the bouncing bodies of the crowd as she does onstage, where her experimental, almost ritualistic movements strike a captivating balance between power and delicacy, holding the audience firmly under her spell.

Then it’s time to head upstairs for Brooklyn shoegazers DIIV, whose seemingly unstoppable rise shows no signs of slowing. From the tiered seating of EartH Theatre, it quickly becomes apparent why the New Yorkers were such a natural choice to support Fontaines D.C. on the Romance tour. Their ethereal vocal harmonies melt effortlessly into magnetic, swirling guitar lines, scratching an itch that’s almost impossible to put into words. By the time their set draws to a close, the entire amphitheatre is on its feet, erupting into rapturous applause.

Pictured: DIIV | Credit: Sam Huddleston

I then make my way down a winding series of staircases and through a succession of doors that I begin to fear might lead me into the Backrooms, before finally being spat out right at the front of the stage in EartH Hall, where cult Aussie rockers Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are tearing through a predictably riotous set. Funnily enough, they were the first band I ever saw at this very venue, back in 2023, when they played a warm-up show ahead of Wide Awake Festival.

Few bands are quite so reliable when it comes to whipping a crowd into a frenzy, and from start to finish, the audience is transformed into a churning sea of bodies, surging apart and crashing back into one another. It’s a triumphant end to an exceptionally well-curated evening of music.

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