The Black Lights Pre-Cursor
28th March 2026, 20:00 – 07:00
Impiety Hour / The White Hotel
Last weekend, armed only with esoteric sticks of Blackpool rock, the STAT team ventured into the Salford inlands for a long night at The Black Light’s Pre-Cursor – a 10-hour “psychic dry run” for the full festival in June – catching sets from a cherry-picked coterie of artists native to The White Hotel climate. STAT reports their findings back on this enigmatic entrée here – with what one attendee called our signature “shit-eating narcissism”.
Attempts to categorise the White Hotel “sound” have often been found wanting, due in large part to the exceptional variety of noise found rattling the shutters on any given weekend. In his excellent profile of The White Hotel’s first decade, Fergal Kinney illustrates how the venue is more than its foreboding exterior and austere branding might suggest, hosting nights dedicated to techno, funk, and even a live brass band. The aim of the Pre-Cursor was to act as a cross section of these disparate subcultures, like a knife through a stick of rock.
The evening opened its eyes in the dark drinking room of Impiety Hour. By the bar were stocked £2.50 sticks of bespoke Blackpool rock, with the promise that one may include a golden ticket for the festival. We didn’t get one. To initiate proceedings, a bit of “I do love to be beside the seaside,” echoed out as the intro to DJ Nonaproriado’s set, a reminder that June, and Blackpool, are still far, far away.
Come midnight, the programming shifted to l’hôtel blanc. The new day and shift to British Summer Time saw sets from Rob Brown of Autechre (who will be appearing at the festival as part of an extremely rare performance by electronic music collective GESCOM) and artist Russell Haswell performing a set of improvisational digital noise – the latter whose extreme tinnitus-inducing frequency barrage caused several confused clubbers to run out to the smoking area. “Have you ever heard music like this before?!” we were asked by a bewildered young man named Yusuf.
Alongside stalwarts of the UK experimental music network, the Pre-Cursor also showcased the new blood who have spent the last half a decade cutting their teeth on rowdy Salford nights – as well as the noisy Lewisham experimenter Lauren Duffus, who will return again to the North come June. Bookending the night were Iceboy Violet – the Mutualism alumni whose high-BPM deconstructed club edits has made them a formidable presence on the city’s queer party scene – and Mr Northern Gothic himself, Rainy Miller. Sharing the decks with Gdynia-based producer 2k88, both artists offer up a sound steeped in pitch-black urbanism, the sound of late nights spent walking around dark industrial towns. It’s no wonder that they feel so at home.
If the Pre-Cursor is significant, it’s as a statement of intent. The White Hotel has been in existence for 10 years, a hell of a long time for a venue so dedicated to experimental culture – they’re usually the first to get wiped out by a bad faith noise complaint or dodgy property developer. Amid continued rumours of its demise and the looming regeneration of the “Strange Quarter”, it continues to thrive. Committing to a full weekend takeover of Blackpool at the height of summer feels like a defiant middle finger to a national arts network that remains largely ambivalent about anything happening in the North West, and an opportunity to celebrate the outsiders who have found community in this most unlikely of places. If you give a shit about any of those things, then you know where to find us in June.
- This article was amended on 1st April 2026 as it originally neglected to mention Lauren Duffus.
GET TICKETS FOR THE BLACK LIGHTS
JUNE 26TH – 28TH 2026
BLACKPOOL, LANCASHIRE
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