By Harry Sutton

Photography by Aaron Garcia Peretz 

It’s my first time in Los Angeles since I was nine. My last memories of this city reduce it to a digital Simpsons-themed ride at Universal Studios and a tedious LA Dodgers game. I spend my week working on my laptop at coffeeshops, trying to avoid Hailey Bieber Erewhon smoothies and Whole Foods tote bags, and wondering what I’m doing in this city that feels more like 500 suburbs stacked atop one another. Finally, the weekend rolls around, and as soon as I step into Echo Park’s most celebrated indie venues, the Echo + Echoplex, I discover where all the cool people in Los Angeles have been hiding all week.

Co-created by concert promoter and curator Sammie Pearson (Pretty But Wicked), and Davis Stewart (American Death Records, Dutch Interior), And Always Forever is a different kind of music festival.

“Our goal is to put legends and newer culturally-relevant acts on the same lineup.” –Sammie Pearson

And that’s exactly what they did.

Last month, I played a song by The Hellp for my dad in the car when he told me I needed to check out an electronic act he listened to back in the day called Suicide. At And Always Forever, Suicide’s own Martin Rev shared the same stage as hot new acts like ear and After. But Rev wasn’t the only icon of decades past who made the weekend special: electronic composer Mark van Hoen played with his project Locust for the first time in over two decades; San Francisco shoegazers Ee played just their second show in the last ten years (a set many of the younger shoegaze acts on the lineup nerded out over); ‘90s lo-fi 4AD act His Name is Alive had the crowd spellbound; and Drop Nineteens co-headlined Sunday night with a monumental wall of sound. It was the kind of night where the kids came out to see their favorite new acts, and their favorite new acts came to see the legends that inspired them to make music in the first place.

“It’s really full circle, because Raines [Lucas] and I would geek out about Ee… There was one day where we tried to learn a bunch of the songs off Ramadan. It’s just so surreal.” –guitarist Liam Armstrong of she’s green

“It feels like a really cool acknowledgment of the older weirdos and the younger weirdos,” –bassist Teddy Nordvold of she’s green

The festival’s two tall, dark ballrooms served as sanctuaries for all ages of festivalgoers — from teens to seventy-somethings. Iconoclasts in leather jackets and septum piercings filled the dim hallways of the sold-out venue all weekend. 

The weekend’s sets had highlights from both heavily anticipated 2025 breakouts and names I didn’t know until their microphones clicked on. Deer park’s blurry, Dean Blunt-ified alternative rock bolstered by a violin charmed me first. Fresh off of his fantastic April album, Terra Infirma, Deer park’s woozy show was perfect for fans of mark william lewis or Chanel Beads. Immediately after Deer park came Brooklyn-based trio Patch+ and their brand of high-energy, fuzzy vocals over surging, idiosyncratic electronic beats. While the festival’s lineup ranged from hulking shoegaze noisewalls to bloopy synths, it all felt like fog-machine music.

Between sets, I found myself looking for fresh air by the smoking area, where instead I ended up in a polluted networking conference. Everyone I ran into was a musician, manager, music video director, or member of the media — the ethos of Los Angeles, I’m told. As Camel Crushes embraced lips across the festival, I bumped shoulders with unexpected faces: Yves Tumor, Gabriette, Tatiana from Snow Strippers, and glaive to name a few. And Always Forever drew them together for the same reason: to catch some of the most exciting noises bubbling up from the underground right now. 

Bassvictim closed out the first night with a set unlike the rest. Crowds mobbed towards the stage, moshing violently to every electroclash circuit-melter. Producer Ike Clateman stayed hunched over his control panel, programming the show’s every note as Maria Manow paraded around the stage, singing along while ripping her nicotine-free vape and pumping up the crowd like a Soundcloud rapper in her prime. Every song devolved into bedlam with each drop. Throngs of fans screamed along to every word as the horde collectively pushed in one direction or another, narrowly avoiding crowd crush. When they played their breakout hit, “Air On A G String,” Manow entered the crowd and moshed with the fans. To the fan who spent the next few minutes asking everyone else in the crowd if they’d seen a black purse — I hope you found it.

On Sunday, the surprises came immediately with the day’s opening set from Eilish Constance. Just 16-years-old, Eilish kicked off with shockingly impressive vocals and songwriting, evoking the art-rock ambition of bands from the Windmill Brixton Scene. RIP Swirl was another marvel, as the German producer played a fuzzed-out set joined by singer Maresz. 

Untitled (halo), After, and Starling were all hometown locals who put on a show in their own backyard.

“I came here growing up. I went to so many punk shows growing up here, just on the subway alone at 14 heading downtown. It’s just so cool to be now playing these venues and being part of that.” —Starling’s Kasha Soutter Willet  

Starling helped cement shoegaze as the defining sound Sunday night — the first in a run of sets that transformed the room into one long, reverb-soaked blur: Sweet93 floated through dreamlike melodies, she’s green followed with heavy guitar that wrapped around the crowd like a weighted blanket, His Name is Alive held the crowd in a trance, and Drop Nineteens’s tidal wave of sound ended the night like a star collapsing on itself. 

“Both nights felt like a weird dream that I didn’t want to wake up from. We were running upstairs and downstairs as fast as we could between bands, trying to experience as much as possible. Hanging with Ee backstage… I got to watch a Drop Nineteens song from the side of the stage. As a fan, I think that was one of the best festival lineups ever, and I feel so lucky we got to be a part of it.” —Sweet93’s Chloe Kohanski

As Drop Nineteens’ set erupted from downstairs, pop duo After closed out the weekend with pristine Y2K-pop sparkle. A wind machine blew through singer Justine Dorsey’s hair throughout the show like she was walking along the shore in a music video from 2001. After offered the most impressive vocals of the weekend — with Dorsey’s voice displaying the elasticity of The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan over trip-hop drum patterns and buoyant synths. 

When I finally left on Sunday night, my ears ringing and my clothes steeped in cigarette stink, I saw Los Angeles in a new light. The twelve hours of strange, beautiful noise — from thick shoegaze gauze to glitchy PC-music breakdowns — felt like the secret I’d been hoping to discover during my stay in the city. This wasn’t the LA you would find on Venice Beach or Hollywood Boulevard, but rather the real thing: the weirdos old and new.