The Thessaloniki psychedelic rock band bring their fifth album, V, to Camden for their first London headline since 2022.
Naxatras formed in Thessaloniki in 2012, when John Vagenas and John Delias met as students in the film department of the city’s Aristotle University. Their self-titled debut was recorded in 2015 at Magnetic Fidelity in a single day, played live and entirely on analogue equipment, and it became one of the best-selling records in heavy psychedelia. II followed in 2016 and III, made the same way, in 2018, then a live record from a sold-out night at Gagarin 205 in Athens, and in 2022 the multi-instrumentalist Pantelis Kargas joined on keyboards and synthesisers for IV.
The band have stayed independent from the start, funding and releasing every record themselves and selling more than 20,000 copies on vinyl and CD. On stage the sound runs from Seventies progressive rock and stoner riffs into funk, jazz and Eastern modes, stretched into long jams in front of a video wall. That set has taken them across most of Europe, onto the bills at Desertfest, Ozora and Dunajam, and on a tour of Australia.
Their earlier London nights were at The Black Heart in 2018 and twice at The Underworld in 2022, first for Desertfest in May and then on their own bill that September. Dingwalls is the first chance to hear V in the city, the 2025 record on which they brought world music and electronic elements into the band’s Seventies rock. Karma Sheen open, a younger group setting Hindustani melody against psychedelic guitar.