Peel Slowly And See Festival
Leiden Holland
March 2026
Photos by Jan Rijk & Judith Zandwijk
Maybe because the world is going insane, we need music even more to drown out the noise of the old men who are frog marching us into Armageddon. Fortunately, there is a deluge of great musics out there and it’s glorious in its imagination and boundary-breaking vision as this year’s edition of Peel Slowly and See showcased. As ever, the event not only puts the small Dutch city of Leiden on the map it also creates a vital cultural space to showcase an eclectic series of bands that will either catalyse new culture or become key big names in their own right. There is music from all over the world here and it’s one of the best line-ups on the festival circuit.
The annual event really surpassed itself in 2026 with a bill that was both thrillingly diverse and also captivating, proving that a walk along the fringes of culture can not only be a glimpse into the future but also a highly entertaining walk on the wild side.
The night kicks off with Zea and Drumband which is a combination of Zea, the 25 year old musical moniker of Arnold de Boer from the Ex and the sixteen-member Drumband Hallelujah Makkum with added minimalist interventions of guitar, cello, clarinet, and drums. The long-term singer from the Ex and his local Dutch marching band from his north Holland hometown are a fascinating affair that sees a post-punk nous brought to old songs sung in their local Frisian language. This fascinating mix is then meshed with the powerful clattering of the drum band, who are all resplendent in their uniforms and when they combine together its a highly effective lesson in just how effective music is when criss-crossing over from different disciplines.
From just up the road in Den Hague, Able Noise are a two piece who combine a baritone guitar with drums that play mind boggling rhythm changes that pull you in with their unexpected shape shifting patterns. Their minimalist music takes advantage of its space to create a mesmerising mindfuck, and anyone who ever loved Shellac for Todd Trainer’s stunning drum gymnastics will instantly be hooked.
Every now and then, music needs to return to its primal core, and they don’t come much more primal than Rotterdam’s Bombstrap, whose self-styled ‘terror punk’ is explosive and in your face and creates a riot of its own. It works because the songs are not just thrillingly dangerous and on the edge of constant collapse but also because they are fronted by a charismatic force of nature who is a human fireball and whirlwind and digs deep into her soul for guttural songs of political outrage or anthems of sex, style and subversion. She is a wildly entertaining if slightly scary charismatron art piece who owns the stage and the building and is very much a superstar in the making if she can somehow just bottle the thrilling art ideas and noise into salvos.
Bombstrap bring their ‘terror punk’ to the stage
Having missed White Magic For Lover in the non-stop carnival that was our Louder Than War Live festival last week, it was great to catch up with them here in one of those epic church gigs where the added a spiritual glow of the building adds to the band’s crystalline melodies that transfix you with their aching beauty.
Dealing a gypsy jazz, the Jimmy Rosenberg Trio are a welcome switch in style. Their timeless music resonates through the centuries and is perfectly framed in the old church. It has the complexity of jazz but also the braggadocio of flamenco as the twin engine room of the acoustics nail down the frantic rhythms with the double bass adding propulsion for Jimmy Rosenberg to deal his beautifully executed lead lines. The guitar player has quite a history, building a big reputation in the states being name-dropped by the likes of Stevie Wonder, before being worn out by the attendant lifestyle and excess and coming back to Holland, where he has rebuilt his reputation with gigs like this that are full of both fire and a passion.
Jimmy Rosenberg Trio
Annoyingly, I miss Bibikov & Augenapfel, two pillars of the Dutch underground scene – Ferrie Heyne from the De Kift on trumpet and storytelling and Luc, the former bassist with The Ex, whom I have not bumped into for decades. Time has been kind to them, and a deep dive into YouTube pings up great live shows where the pair of them deal jazz-tinged soundscapes like a twin Tom Waits from the lowlands for Ferrie to weave his lyrics about the miraculous adventures of the two mountaineers, Augenapfel en Bibikov. who, in turn, believe they are actually Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Muovipussi, don’t just shift the goalposts; they obliterate them. The Finnish trio, whose name means ‘plastic bag’, deal a thrillingly bizarre theatrical electro punk black metal rap crossover show that constantly deals in the unexpected. The music is beyond avant-garde with electro crashing and banging that oddly has its own groove. Meanwhile, the three of them share vocals that range from a whisper to a scream and smile disarmingly at the audience whilst leaping around like maniacs or bending themselves into yoga shapes. It’s all a beautifully confrontational performance art that is your friend and shakes up all expectations and is total genius and eminently listenable in a truly unlikely way.
Muovipussi put the ‘onk’ into bonkers
In all the greatest art and in life itself its always best when the borders are blurred and the cranked manic hyper pop jazz punk of Polish duo vgtbl creates a manic rush of sound of vision for a series of songs about vegetables for an adoring mosh pit to dance like aubergines to.
The sheer musicality of trans-Balkan trio Lelee makes the most of their guitar/bass/drums core and their thrilling combo of slacker aesthetic with the kind of shimmering art rock of a Television is reinvented in a series of songs hooked around brilliant bass lines, hypnotic guitar licks and power drums. Their set is a great display of just how much more can be squeezed out of trad formats.
Local to Leiden Space Siren, have spent twenty years at the forefront of the Dutch take on guitar pedal overload shoegaze with their inventive, dreamy, and noisy guitar music that has pioneered the sonic seminal possibilities of sound in the lowlands on one of the gigs of their farewell tour, and they still mesmerise with their soundscapes.
Beamed in from another planet Juliбn Mayorga, is a Colombian avant-gardist who now lives in Spain. His music matches his vibrant threads, mixing and mashing delivers a kaleidoscopic mix of post-cumbia, psychedelia, anti-capitalist satire, and polyrhythmic chaos delivered from his electronic tool kit — and somehow makes it danceable too. He mixes his poetic skree with great guitar lines and dances like a shaman – it’s wonderful stuff.
Juliбn Mayorga
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