Ozric Tentacles at Down The Hill – The Eternal Wheel Keeps Turning

Down The Hill is not the kind of festival you simply stumble upon by chance. The 2026 edition was sold out and brought roughly a thousand visitors together down  the hill. Anyone still hoping to buy a ticket at the gate on Saturday was out of luck. We only attended the second day, mainly because that was when several bands were scheduled that connect with the musical landscape we follow at The Progspace. We will return to some of those other names later, and possibly to the festival as a whole as well. But one band was an obvious first stop: Ozric Tentacles.

We had seen the British space rock veterans only last year at 013 Tilburg, where their concert unfolded as a large-scale audiovisual trip. (https://theprogspace.com/a-psychedelic-journey-with-ozric-tentacles-and-silas-saski-at-013-tilburg-nl-29-03-2025/) At Down The Hill, the band played on the Wooden Stage, a more compact setting that brought the musicians closer together. The video projections had a little less room to breathe than in Tilburg, but still remained an integral part of the psychedelic atmosphere. At the same time, the tighter stage setup made the interaction between the musicians especially visible.

With Chewier, the band headed straight into the familiar Ozric universe. Electronic pulses, deep bass, tight drumming and Ed Wynne’s instantly recognisable guitar playing locked together from the opening minutes. His guitar rarely sounds like just a guitar: notes whistle, curl and drift through the synthesizers as if both instruments were emerging from the same alien sound source.

That is also why Ozric Tentacles remains so difficult to place in a single category after all these years. Progressive rock, space rock, ambient, dub, electronica and psychedelia are all present, yet no single label fully covers what they do. Older classics such as Eternal Wheel and Erpland fit effortlessly alongside more recent material. The band moves through music from different decades without any real stylistic dividing line becoming audible.

The most striking change in colour comes later.

A major role in the constantly shifting undercurrent is played by Corey Atheleny Wallace, aka Coreysan. His background in reggae, calypso, Afrobeat, fusion and electronic music seems almost tailor-made for the Ozric universe. While Ed Wynne often draws the eye with his guitar work, Wallace provides the centre of gravity. His bass lines are deep, elastic and often distinctly dub-inflected.

Together with drummer Pat Garvey, he now forms a particularly strong rhythmic core. When we saw Ozric Tentacles at 013 last year, we already noted how Wallace and Garvey, though relatively new to the band, immediately seemed essential to its live chemistry. A year later, that impression has only grown stronger. The bass does not simply sit underneath the music; it pulls at it, gives it bounce and adds a physical quality to the electronic layers.

And then, after about half an hour, both the sound and the image on stage begin to change.

Saskia Maxwell takes her place.

That moment is more important than it may seem on paper. Maxwell does not function as a flautist who plays from beginning to end. Her role is much more selective. She tends to appear when the music becomes more open, atmospheric and organic. Her entrance during Lotus Unfolding therefore feels almost like the beginning of a second chapter.

After a first half hour dominated by guitar, bass, drums and electronics, her flute suddenly brings literal breath into the music. Its clear, shimmering tone floats through the electronic layers and adds a colour that is difficult to reproduce with synthesizers. At the same time, she changes the visual dynamic of the stage. Her movement and presence bring a distinctly different accent to the compact line-up.

We had already noticed that in Tilburg last year, but here it stood out even more because her arrival was so clearly delayed. From that moment on, the music seemed to gain more air without losing any of its rhythmic power.

And that is exactly where Ozric Tentacles once again shows why the band remains so convincing live. The music can be technically complex, but it rarely feels cerebral. You can analyse the different layers, but you can just as easily surrender to them. Dub grooves, sequencers, psychedelic guitar lines and flute constantly move in and out of one another until the distinction between rock and electronic music barely seems relevant anymore.

As the set progressed, that physical pulse became increasingly prominent. Especially in the interplay between Wallace and Garvey, a groove developed that made the music almost danceable, while Ed Wynne continued to paint above it with his characteristic floating guitar lines. The band moved effortlessly between spacious passages and more rhythm-driven sections without ever losing cohesion.

Because we had to leave a little early, we unfortunately missed the full release of energy in the closing part of the show. Only afterwards did it become clear just how far things had escalated. Saskia Maxwell later wrote that this may well have been her favourite Ozric Tentacles show in the roughly five years she has been touring with the band. According to her, the crowd completely let loose, with moshing and crowdsurfing, and she herself was swept up by the atmosphere to the point of diving off the stage and crowdsurfing above the audience.

That single image may say more about the evening than any technical analysis ever could: a musician who enters after half an hour as a subtle colourist with her flute, only to end up being carried above the crowd by the end of the show.

It is also a perfect illustration of what still makes Ozric Tentacles so special today. This is a band whose history reaches back to the 1980s, playing complex instrumental music within a highly distinctive universe, yet live it never feels museum-like or detached. Quite the opposite: the music remains physical, colourful, playful and, at times, downright ecstatic.

Compared with our 013 Tilburg show in March 2025, much of the repertoire felt familiar, but the overall experience was still different. Where Tilburg came across more as a large-scale audiovisual journey, Down The Hill ultimately seemed to develop into a collective explosion of energy between band and audience.

That may ultimately be Ozric Tentacles’ greatest strength.

Their musical universe has been instantly recognisable for decades. The same colours return, the same grooves keep circling, and some songs have been travelling with the band for more than thirty years. Yet a concert rarely feels like repetition.

The journey changes a little every time.

And sometimes, it even ends right in the middle of the crowd.

The eternal wheel keeps turning.

Setlist

Chewier – O-I – Eternal Wheel – Erpland – Lotus Unfolding – Sunscape – Ayurvedic – The Throbbe – Pyramidion – Jellylips – Kick Muck – Sploosh!

With thanks to Elżbieta Williamson for her help with this report.