When talking about music, it is one of those topics where the subject matter is extensive. It is impossible to run out of things to talk about. As a music journalist who writes and talks for numerous publications such as The Quietus and The Guardian, Gareth Main would definitely agree to it. Besides writing, he also runs his own weekly podcast “Independent Music Podcast”, which promotes independent music from every genre conceivable. From this, it is most likely that he has been doing his own research to gain a wider perspective towards the global music scene, and music festivals would be a prime textbook to learn from. Hence, we asked Gareth to tell us his top 5 memorable music festivals.

Milhões de Festival – Barcelos, Portugal

It’s a Portuguese festival in a small town called Barcelos which is just outside of Porto. That’s my favorite festival by a long way, and the reason why is it’s really small but it has a huge variety of music there like completely different genre. They’ve got a stage by the swimming pool where they’ll play some ambient electronic music followed by some death metal and followed by something else entirely. For this year, the eclecticism of that festival, like the curation, is by far the best, also it’s a beautiful sight, it’s 40 degrees, there are lovely people, and the trip itself is super cheap.

Nyege Nyege Festival – Jinja, Uganda

It’s a similar sort of thing. It has incredible electronic music. It has got people from all over the world, but loads of people come from Central and East Africa. The festival was held in the rainforest at the start of the Nile in Uganda, it’s otherworldly, different and a wild place to be.

Raw Power Festival – London, UK

It’s a super small festival with about 300 people. It was held indoors and this festival mostly plays psych-rock but also the more experimental side of rock as well. Also, in this festival, even the band’s that on the lower end of the lineup are going to be something completely different and something completely new for you to see.

End of the Road Festival – Dorset, UK

Definitely the biggest on this list with 10,000 people. It’s one of those festivals where the line-up had Bella Union and labels like that, that usually have a decent presence there. But it’s one of the festivals where the music is great, and everything else about the festival is absolutely incredible. The food is great and the scene is great. They collaborate with a lot of artists so that every little detail is brilliant and beautiful and surprising as well. You could go there every year for a decade and every year you’ll find something new and interesting about it.

Supersonic – Birmingham, UK

It was the first festival that I really fell in love with. I’ve been to other big festivals like Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, but Supersonic was the first one where you would find bands you’ve never heard of ever before on the lineup and they would blow your mind. It’s super experimental and super weird too. The first year I went there, it was headlined by Sunn O))), Steven O’Malley’s band, I’ve never seen the perform live before and they were playing in this warehouse where there are lots of corrugated metal sheets and because the bass was so heavy, it was just rattling this whole building. It was unbelievable, like mind-meltingly good.