Left of the Dial is Rotterdam’s four-day surrender to guiding forces

It’s a wet and windy weekend in Rotterdam, but Left of the Dial’s patented skydancers couldn’t care less. They surrender to the weather with open arms, toothy grins and black beady eyes. Over four days of chaos and communion, the Dutch showcase festival’s visitors gleefully follow their example. Perhaps we should put the term showcase festival between quotation marks when it comes to Left of the Dial. In just a handful of years, the festival has mushroomed from maybe 10, 20 relatively obscure names to over 160 bands and artists scattered all over various venues across the Dutch port city. The tally of household alternative names who plunged into this mess during their more wet and naive years is honestly impressive; Lambrini Girls, PISS, mary in the junkyard, and Mercury Prize-winners English Teacher, just to name a batch. Somehow amidst this upswell in profile and activity, Left of the Dial doesn’t have the kind of enterprising industry-leaning sheen of some of its counterparts. From the get-go, its relatively small organisation has been refreshingly transparent about the challenges they face on a yearly basis, equally forthcoming about failures as they are about their successes. ...