Touchdown in Manchester! I’ll be spending the weekend in England once again as I’m visiting Radar Festival starting tomorrow. A festival I’ve never visited before, I’ll be going in somewhat blindly, expecting to be seeing some fantastic bands in the progressive / math rock range while also sort of preparing myself for a more low-key and perhaps even underwhelming festival experience at the same time, given that Radar Festival is held indoors. I haven’t visited many indoors festivals before. The only one popping to mind is Headbangers Parade, which was held indoors in the Dutch town of Den Bosch at the start of 2023. It honestly had more of a ‘big gig’ kind of vibe rather than a festival feeling, therefore I’m a bit skeptical about the true vibes at this one but I’d happily let myself be surprised. Fact is that the line-up of Radar Festival is very solid with some bands I can’t wait to be seeing live, including Graphic Nature, Hacktivist, unpeople, Benthos, and Protest The Hero. In preparation for seeing the Canadian math icons, I’ve spun their latest album ‘Within‘ quite a lot this week and it has swiftly been bombarded to the top of my list of favourite albums of this year. I’m expecting Protest The Hero to be one of my absolute headliners of this weekend.