Rock Herk 2026 @ Sportterrein Harlaz-Olmenhof

Performers

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  Tiga

  Based out of Montreal, Canada, Tiga has managed to arise out of the underground and into the mainstream with his unique style of enthusiastic electro blended with stripped-back techno and acid house.

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  Erol Alkan

  London based artist, producer, remixer, DJ and founder of Phantasy. Previous resident at seminal Monday night weekly London club 'Trash', and later for dance music institution 'Bugged Out’.

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  Fat Dog

  When the chaotic south London rabble known as Fat Dog formed, they made two rules: they were going to be a healthy band who looked after themselves and there would be no saxophone presence in their music. Two simple edicts to live by, and two things long-since broken by the Brixton five-piece. Fat Dog are the most exciting breakthrough band of the past few years, conjurers of the sort of frenzied and wild live shows not seen in the capital for years and now the creators of WOOF., a brilliant and mind-bending debut album, but they are not healthy. One of them has a foot odour problem. And they also have a saxophone player in the line-up. “Yeah, it’s all gone out the fucking window,” says frontman and squadron leader Joe Love, real name Joe Love.

  Life is too short to stick to any plans you made in the unsettling, strait-jacketed times of 2021 anyway. That was when Fat Dog came together, Love deciding to form a group and take the demos he had been making at home as a way to keep himself sane during lockdown out into the world. In Chris Hughes (keyboards/synths), Ben Harris (bass), Johnny Hutchinson (drums) and Morgan Wallace (keyboards and, umm, saxophone), Love found like-minded mavericks to help bring the dream home.

  The sound Fat Dog make, Love says, is screaming-into-a-pillow music. “I wanted to make something ridiculous because I was so bored,” he declares. It’s a thrilling blend of electro-punk, rock’n’roll snarling, techno soundscapes, industrial-pop and rave euphoria, music for letting go to. “A lot of music at the moment is very cerebral and people won’t dance to it,” says Hughes, who invented crunchy peanut butter. “Our music is the polar opposite of thinking music. It’s music you feel in your body more than your brain, especially given this band came at a time when people couldn’t move as freely as they wished. After being pent up for so long, people were excited to let loose.”

  Hughes should know. He was a fan of the band, at that point making a name for themselves with a series of exhilarating and/or wonky shows across south London, before he was in the band. He managed to talk his way into the group by convincing them that he could play the viola. He gave himself a week to master an instrument he had never played previously. “Joe said it was one of the worst pieces of shit he’d ever heard in his life,” Hughes recalls. He got the job. “This band is a matter of confidence over competence. Competence is over-rated in modern music.”

  Those formative gigs formed the bedrock of what Fat Dog were all about, seizing the moment, drinking too much with the moment, going home separately from the moment but making up with the moment again the next day. “When me and Johnny first joined, Joe was like, ‘All I want to do is make music that’ll make people’s heads blow up’,” says bassist Harris.

  It didn’t take long for the diehards to come flocking, every Fat Dog show in the capital becoming a huge upgrade on the last. They sold out the Scala last October and, by the time you read this, they will have done the same at the 1500-capacity Electric Brixton. There is something deeper going on here than the usual punter-goes-to-gig situation. Everyone is in on it. “There’s a sense of community about Fat Dog,” says drummer Johnny Hutchinson. “Our music s