Supersonic Festival welcomes Aya, Penelope Trappes, Six Organs, Jackie-O, Big Special, Abdullah Miniawy, Skloss and Rún

Supersonic Festival 2025 lineup poster

SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL WELCOMES THE FOLLOWING ADDITIONS TO THE 2025 EDITION; ABDULLAH MINIAWY, AYA, BIG SPECIAL, JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER, PENELOPE TRAPPES, RÚN, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, SKLOSS

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Listen to the Supersonic 2025 playlist

The Supersonic line-up is as follows:

Supersonic will return to Digbeth, Birmingham on the 29th-31st August 2025, making space for moments of collective joyful communion and true escapism against a backdrop of a world in turmoil. Says artistic director Lisa Meyer, “We are living in abhorrent times, so now more than ever we must cherish our creative spaces. I am so grateful that our audiences and artists trust in us. This is what keeps pushing the festival forward.”

The festival is proud to welcome back Backxwash for a UK exclusive, Rich(ard) Dawson, Funeral Folk (Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman) and Witch Club Satan (performing in the UK for the first time), Moin and many others to its 2025 edition.

Backxwash Photo by Méchant Vaporwave

Supersonic was a great experience!! The energy from the crowd and the attention to detail from the organisers made our first UK show unforgettable. The festival has an incredibly unique curation of many talented artists and fosters a community-driven environment. I’m so grateful to be returning this year to perform my upcoming album and look forward to this year’s lineup.
– Backxwash

Aya Photo by Dee Iskrzynska

New names have also been added to the lineup, including Aya, notorious for her raw energy, humour, and unpredictability. Combining high-concept ideas with DIY aesthetics, Aya uses voice, electronics, and razor-sharp wit to blur the boundaries between performance art, rave, and stand-up comedy. Her shows can feel like a shared exorcism—funny, chaotic, sweaty, and emotionally charged. Egyptian-born Abdullah Miniawy merges the spiritual intensity of Sufi chants with the improvisational freedom of jazz. Accompanied by trombonists Robinson Khoury (2024 Django Reinhardt Prize from the Academy of Jazz) and Jules Boittin, Miniawy’s sound is one of resistance, ritual, and reimagining—music that doesn’t just cross cultures, but reshapes them.

Penelope Trappes creates immersive, emotionally resonant soundscapes that blend ambient, shoegaze, and experimental electronics. Her music is intimate and atmospheric, with reverb-drenched vocals and minimalist textures that evoke a haunting, dreamlike world. Jackie-O Motherfucker, the experimental collective founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, will bring their dynamic fusion of free jazz, psychedelic folk, drone, and space rock, renowned for their unpredictable live shows. Supersonic is excited to welcome back Six Organs of Admittance, who present an ever-evolving blend of ecstatic melody, acoustic intricacy and spiritual noise. Skloss, the Austin-by-way-of-Glasgow duo of Karen Skloss and Sandy Carson will bring heavy psychedelia, post-metal drones, meditative rhythms, and raw distorted riffs. Rocket Recordings latest signing Rún, an Irish band whose sound is rooted in folk tradition but deeply exploratory and atmospheric (channeling influences from Coil to Pauline Oliveros), will also be welcomed to the Supersonic stage. And Black Country duo Big Special will fuse the grit and spirit of their industrial roots into a raw, urgent and evocative sound that blends the personal with the political.

We’re buzzing to be on this year’s Supersonic line up. To get the nod from our hometown’s top alt festival for outside the box artists is a proper sense of pride. It’s always been the festival that showcases the most interesting experimental genres, and some of the best up and comers from scenes you never knew existed… it’s a festival that helps cement Brum as the cultural hub it is.
– Big Special

Big Special Photo by Isaac Watson

Supersonic exists increasingly as a political act as much as a festival, and when times become dire, it’s important we have music which channels our fears and anxieties into cathartic rage and noise. HIRS Collective are here to do just that, a dynamic, shapeshifting ensemble rooted in de-individualisation and anarchist ethos. Death Goals will bring queercore fury, with a cacophony that combines post-hardcore, screamo and noise rock. And Divide And Dissolve are returning to perform from their new album Insatiable. Takiaya Reed will provide floor-shaking, life-affirming drones, in music that is a heavy and beautiful acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence – it honours ancestors, opposes white supremacy and calls for indigenous sovereignty. Insatiable in particular is an album about love, and an urgent call to imagine a better world before it’s too late.

Supersonic will also be host to a performance from the doom cabaret collective OMO, a band featuring members of iconic Scottish acts like Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, Desalvo, Aereogramme, and Stretchheads. Water Damage are a Texas-based droning supergroup of sorts, composed of experimental veterans from projects including Spray Paint, Black Eyes, Swans, more eaze, USA/Mexico, and more. Adding to the heaviness of the lineup are Meatdripper (featuring Kaila Whyte of THE NONE), an entity summoned from the remnants of punk, experimental, and noise rock bands. Forged in the industrial haze of Birmingham, this band was never meant to exist – Supersonic hosted their debut live performance last year and couldn’t resist bringing them back for more.

Supersonic aims to help attendees unload from the heaviness of the world by bringing the party. Mermaid Chunky will be joining the festival for an expanded performance which can only be described as a kaleidoscopic, hypnotic dance ritual of joyous chaos. They will also be the guest artists performing at the Supersonic Kid’s gig. Nigerian sonic trailblazer Aunty Rayzor (Nyege Nyege) will be delivering commanding rap verses and catchy pop hooks, driven by exuberant bass, playful rhythms, and unmatched energy. Buñuel will return to the festival, featuring Eugene S. Robinson (formerly Oxbow), whose truly wild noise rock takes the listener to extreme places in unpredictable fashion. There’s also Zu, an atypical Italian trio of drums, electric bass and baritone saxophone, who blend math rock, no wave, punk, jazz, and grindcore into a sonic explosion.

Aunty Rayzor Photo by Mathieu Insa

Joining the programme, Supersonic have provided a selection of some of the most exciting folk acts in the underground today. Those include Cinder Well, the project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter/producer Amelia Baker, whose songs carry a heaviness in their words and atmosphere as opposed to distortion. Hedgling are an Irish duo consisting of Natalia Beylis and Willie Stewart, whose music utilises found objects and dissolving tapes loops to evoke the parallel worlds that co-exist around, above and beneath us. Poor Creature are Cormac Mac Diarmada (Lankum), Ruth Clinton (Landless) and John Dermody (The Jimmy Cake). They take songs of love, loss and the supernatural from Irish and American traditions, reimagining them in new arrangements that are by turns sparse, dreamy, psychedelic and propulsive. Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions will also play. Hayden is an experimental musician whose haunting, atmospheric sound draws from the landscapes of Todmorden, West Yorkshire. With a voice weathered by time, her music blends aching folk abstractions with immersive, reverb-soaked textures.