TICKETS

While Stages Festival lights up Sunderland, Pop Recs is hosting the weird, the wired and the downright uncompromising.

On Sat 27th Sept, three acts step sideways into the fringe: A23a, BDGR, and Distant Listening. Expect fractured voices, electronic chaos, DIY fury, and drum machines that think for themselves. This isn’t background music — this is sound pushed to the edge.

BDGR
Techno? Rock? Electro? Doom? Post-punk? The answer is yes.
BDGR (ex-Badger) are a two-piece wrecking ball smashing no-wave, IDM and industrial noise together with pint-glass philosophy. They’ve torn through UK and European stages, had tracks remixed by Andrew Fearn (Sleaford Mods), and picked up plays on BBC 6 Music, NTS and beyond. Their 2025 debut album A Gifted Kind of Stupor is a slab of controlled chaos — and live, it’s even harder, louder, and messier.

A23a
Broken. Spoken. Words. And Sound.
Claire Robertson and Martin Christie rip spoken word into pieces and rebuild it as drifting sonic architecture. Claire’s performance art presence collides with Martin’s live sound-carving, turning poetry into fractured echoes and warped melody. More than a gig — it’s part ritual, part hallucination.

Distant Listening
Andrew Hodson (Warm Digits) got sick of waiting for a guitarist, so he built one. His bespoke synth follows his live drumming, spitting out  techn- fuzz, granular glitches and free-jazz bursts as if possessed. It’s part Frankenstein machine, part futuristic dream, and every performance is a one-off detonation of rhythm and noise.