The Best Bands At Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia 2016
Liverpool Festival of Psychedelia continues to provide some of the best niche entertainment for music fans in the country. With festivals, one of the main pleasures is seeing bands you might not otherwise catch live. Here are five of the best from this year’s stellar line-up:
Deja Vega performed a storming set full of atmosphere. Their psych influenced rock received a fantastic reception during their set at The Blade Factory. Songs like ‘Telephone Voice’, Eyes of Steal’ and ‘Hitchcock’ were breath taking. The new single ‘Friends in High Places’ is already making ripples and gaining airplay on BBC Introducing Manchester. Expect to hear more of this Winsford band soon.
Go!Zilla are an Italian band with plenty of drive and psych-rock ambition. Forming in Firenze in 2012, they have been providing exciting psychedelic fuzz around the world ever since. With a set that included ‘Gambling With the Crocodile’ and ‘Get Me Out of Here’, the band proved another crowd pleaser. An excellent set by a band with talent to spare.
La Luz brought their up-beat surf-inspired sound to the Furnace stage and proved a real pleasure, with their strong female vocals and spaghetti western feel. There was a warmth and laid-back cool vibe to the sound from this Seattle band. A great way to blow away the British autumn blues.
Taman Shud are set to bring out their second album, ‘Oracle War’ at the end of this month. Their driving, majestic sound has dark, soaring vocals and killer keyboards. Not for the faint hearted, their set is a helter-skelter ride through a hellish hinterland.  The set included tracks from the new album, such as ‘Nine Knots’ and the title track ‘Oracle War’. With their first album ‘Viper Smoke’ already highly acclaimed, early festival goers were lucky to catch this vital, pounding set from this excellent London band.
Top of the list was the set from The Moonlandingz. They took the audience and knocked the comfortable complacency out of it from the first song to the last. Lias Saoudi, aka Johnny Rocket, was every bit the psych-glam superstar. He left the stage, singing in the audience and sitting on the barriers before re-joining his female counterpart on stage. They finished with the anthem ‘Man in Me Lyfe’ sending the crowd wild.  For a fictional band, what they bring to any live performance is visceral and very, very real. If you missed this, you missed out.
Roxy Gillespie
