Acid Horse 2025: tQ Subscriber Tickets

A message from John offering you discounted tickets to three-day tQ-related event Acid Horse 25! 

If you’re a subscriber to tQ or follow the site closely you’ve probably noticed Luke and I warbling on about Acid Horse – this, thankfully, isn’t a hardcore rave remix of a Richard Dawson track about sending poor old dobbin to the knackers while a donk slams home at 160bpm. The horse in question is the white chalk horse of Alton Barnes, just a few miles up the road from the Wiltshire village where Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor Press and I are neighbours. 

Acid Horse is our family-friendly two-stage, three-day party in a beautiful canalside pub in rural Wiltshire under the Alton Barnes chalk horse and neolithic long barrows, with some of our favourite bands, artists and DJs in attendance. And we’d like you to join us. We’re offering all tQ subscribers 10% off adult tickets and 100% off kids tickets (details at the foot of this email) so you can come and have a good time with us. The acid in question refers not to a vat in which one dissolves elderly GGs but to techno, psychedelic rock and all sorts of stuff in between that you can either dance or chill to in beautiful surroundings. 

All of the details can be found at the Acid Horse website (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) but here’s a quick guide to what’s on offer at the first festival of the Summer. 

Acid Horse is a three day music event held at The Barge Inn (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Honeystreet, Wiltshire (one hour from London and 90 minutes from Bristol by rail) on the bank holiday weekend of Friday 23 May to Sunday 25. It’s kid friendly, there’s a wide range of food available including vegan and vegetarian options, and outside vendors doing pizza and Thai meals. Tickets include three nights camping onsite, there are glamping tents available (email acidhorsewilts@gmail.com (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for details), the local area is a joy to walk around and Avebury is a neolithic stone’s throw away (there will be at least one organised walk this year with a local historian at the helm). And that’s before we get to the crop circles… But don’t just take our word for how unique it is, stellar performers from a recent line up Shovel Dance Collective (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) praised a “special event” set in a landscape “imbued with magic”. 

The line up features one of our all-time core artists… EFFING MATMOS (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)! And you’ll be able to see the first European performance, in quad, of music related to their Metallic Life Review (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) album, out in June. Eleven years since tQ released his first record as East India Youth, Hostel, William Doyle is visiting to play his all-time-great Total Strife Forever (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) album in full. If that sounds way too relaxing… never fear, we have splattercore breaks legend turned digital dancehall dominator Scotch Rolex! And if conversely sounds way too much then we have the sunset cosmic vibe transmission of The Utopia Strong! 

Elsewhere, Rotherham’s Karl D’Silva, the incredible sideman in various iterations of GNOD, Vanishing, Drunk In Hell, has with Love Is A Flame In The Dark (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), stepped into the spotlight himself, releasing one of the most fervently admired alt-pop albums of the last 12 months. And now he brings his mix of tough minimal electronics, yearning second wave synth pop, low-slung industrial funk and arena-sized emo hooks to The Barge Inn! Saturday night DJ mayhem will be shot into our ears courtesy of Karl “Regis” O’Connor, well dressed man of techno, with other headline slots from Dyslecta and Slav To The Rhythm. 

Recent Quietus heart/ear throbs Dawn Terry (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Milkweed (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), MPTL Microplastics (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Haress (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Sealionwoman (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Rattle (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Michael (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), MacGillivray (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and 2rana 3crana (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) play among many others besides! 

And if you’re still wondering, here are ten highlights (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) as chosen by the man with the golden ears Noel ‘New Weird Britain’/’Straight Hedge’ Gardner. 

For early risers and night owls we have a Warhammer 40k painting sesh, a Mario Karts-tournament, impromptu campfire gigs, loads more DJs, the mysterious, partially bearded and heavily torrid ‘Naked Brunch’ duo, the enigmatic Gary Meat Feast and your chance to see the greatest ceiling mural in a pub ever… 

Tickets for anyone reading this message are £135 per adult, and kids under 15 for free (usual price is £150 and £10 respectively). Simply send the money to Acidhorsewilts@gmail.com (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) PayPal and email the same address with Acid Horse tQ Offer in the subject line to let us know the names in your party. Feel free to invite any mates (if they’re not wallies) whether they subscribe to tQ or not. If you say they’re OK, they’re welcome. 

John Doran, Wiltshire