DIY Alive 2026: Nine Bands, Two Rooms and One Ridiculous Ending

DIY Alive is back. Four years after its first and, until now, only edition, it took over EartH in Dalston on Saturday with two stages, a Music Futures Hub doing talks in the kitchen, and a line-up that looked like someone had been scrolling through my playlist.

A Chaotic Crowd for Sports Team © Daniel Lincoln

EartH is an old cinema, and the Theatre upstairs looks like nobody's touched it since the 1930s. It's faded, a bit knackered and absolutely gorgeous. The Hall downstairs is a big, dark room that’s very cool in its own right, perfect for standing in and getting sweaty. Over the course of nine sets, I went up and down those stairs a lot.

Walt Disco

Walt Disco opened the Hall at 2 pm looking like they'd wandered in from a gothic costume drama. The singer leapt around the stage and danced with a loose, slithering kind of movement. Fantastic stuff.

They'd released their self-titled third album the day before and played like a band who knew it was good. Big, dramatic, the odd operatic moment, and everyone in the band singing at some point, which was lovely to see. ‘My Body's Still Mine’, second to last, was the one. The backing vocals hit so hard that the song became the emotional peak of the set. Then the bassist closed things out with a falsetto that was beautiful.

Opening a festival at 2 pm is a tough slot. They made it feel like a headline set.

Martial Arts

Upstairs in the Theatre, Martial Arts had SO MUCH ENERGY that I'm leaving the capitals in. Five lads from Manchester, three electric guitars and no interest whatsoever in holding back. Always a brilliant thing to see.

At one point the bass was physically wobbled for noise, a guitar held up to an amp for feedback and four men shouting into microphones at once. Excellent.

They rocked backwards and forwards the entire set, and everything felt like beautifully controlled chaos. The only problem was the room. The Theatre is lovely, but it couldn't hold them. Put them in the Hall next time, and maybe brace the walls.

Dead Dads Club

Back downstairs, Dead Dads Club eased in gently. The first song was pretty, full of lovely riffs, and I thought I had them pegged. I didn’t.

This is Chilli Jesson's project (yes, him from Palma Violets), and their debut came out in January. Live, the set keeps changing shape. One song sat on a synth bassline while the drummer fired off weird sounds from a pad, and the singer was twisting his own vocal effects as he went. Every time I thought I'd worked them out, the next song went somewhere else.

By the end I'd gone from mildly curious to frantically writing down everything they were doing. These lot have my attention.

Master Peace

Master Peace and his band looked like three people having the best time of their lives and refusing to let you sit it out. His new album, if i don't love you, who will ?, came out the day before, and they were buzzing.

Peace Okezie is hugely charismatic; the drummer's fills kept making me look over, and the guitarist threw himself into every song. The whole thing was so funky that standing still wasn't an option. You could feel their energy coming off the stage, and it didn't take long for the room to catch it.

That came to a head on ‘Home’, when Master Peace got the crowd chanting back, decided we weren't loud enough and stopped the song. We tried again. We were louder. Fair enough.

Picture Parlour

Picture Parlour caught me completely off guard. Two songs in, I thought they were so cool. Two more and I was wondering how I'd managed to miss them.

Katherine Parlour is effortlessly charismatic, and her voice is excellent. Then there's Ella Risi, whose guitar is basically a second singer, firing riffs back at the vocals all set. Every riff was a good one, and the guitar often felt just as important to the melody as the vocal.

Old-school rock 'n' roll, done brilliantly. How had I not listened to these guys before? They are firmly on my radar now.

Gretel

Back up to the Theatre for Gretel, who was obviously amazing. I knew she would be. Her voice is incredible live, and Gabe was alongside her on guitar as always.

‘Fire Blooming Trees’ was the standout. It sounded noticeably different from the version I knew, with the drums pushing it somewhere new and some brilliant fills where the drummer went wild. It gave the song a completely different energy.

The old Theatre suited her perfectly, and that beautiful voice filled every bit of it.

Feet

Feet are always great and were great again, which is becoming reassuringly predictable at this point. I’ve seen them a few times now, and they still have exactly the kind of energy that makes their sets ridiculously enjoyable: lively, chaotic, and so much fun.

They played two unreleased songs that I’d already heard during previous sets, but they were still two of the highlights. Both sounded huge live, and if anything, they’ve got better each time I’ve heard them.

For a band I already know I love, it’s a very good sign that the songs I’m most excited to hear live are the ones that aren’t even out yet. Whatever comes next, I’m so ready for it.

Porij

Porij were outrageously fun. Within minutes the Hall had stopped being a gig venue and turned into a very sweaty dancefloor.

Singer Egg had the whole room with them, the trumpet was brilliant every time it appeared, and the drummer had a few explosive moments that gave the set another kick. I looked around and couldn't find a single person who wasn't dancing, me very much included.

By this point the whole festival had properly tipped over into party mode, and Porij were right at the centre of it.

Off the scale.

Sports Team

And then Sports Team. DIY billed this as their return nearly a decade after their first DIY show, and the end of the DIY Alive tour. What it turned into was carnage.

The whole crowd became one giant mosh pit from the first song to the last. Not in the big choruses. The whole time.

In the middle of it all stood Ben Mack behind his keyboard, barely moving, like he was waiting for a bus. The room fell apart around him, and he hardly blinked. It's one of the funniest things I've seen at a gig.

I still don't really understand why that crowd was so completely feral for an entire set. I don't particularly need to. For as long as it lasted, the room felt magical.

I wrote "one of the best times of my life" in my notes on the night. I've slept on it since. Still True.

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Alex Battman
Contributor, BritRock Heaven