May 15, 2025
In our final feature looking at what to expect from each night of the festival, we take a closer look at Sunday’s closing party, an uplifting mix of music and performances featuring Bee Asha, MC Yallah & Debmaster and Ishmael Ensemble’s eclectic jazz infused energy.
Your final chance to explore The Paper Factory and everything within, we open at 1pm for people of all ages to explore the site and artwork for free. From 6pm, the event becomes ticketed and over 18s only.
Come and spend a chilled Sunday afternoon discovering the work of over 30s visual artists, and witness the completed work of the Edinburgh International Mural Festival who are around during the festival working on live pieces.
In the Club Space, Tinderbox present their Immersive Stage takeover, an afternoon of improvisation and performance with guests including a Music & Movement Jam Session (1pm), Greta McMillan and Drake Music Scotland (2:15pm), Boardgame (3pm), Curious Seed & Tinderbox Collective (4pm) and Idiogram (5pm).
Also head into the Room To Play just next door – nestled within the office block, step into the Reimagined Ruins – a jungle of real and artificial plants; a room filled with projections and interactive installations that use visual programming and electronic sensors to respond to your movements and sound. Reimagined Ruins is open to explore from 1pm-6pm, Thursday to Sunday.
At 2:30pm in the Long Room, MNDMTH AKA Stuart Brown brings his acclaimed live multimedia drum performance, an immersive audiovisual percussion piece for Hidden Door reflecting the rituals and rhythms of machines and workers that once occupied the former Paper Factory.
The Jack Daniels Stage kicks into life at 4:15pm with San Jose, wielding their forthright, raucous and versatile reputation with a snarled grin. Although falling under the ever expanding umbrella term of “post-punk”, San Jose have a dedication to avoid musical confinement, the five piece often incorporate instrumentation uncommon to heavier styles of music, such as brass and accordion, and interweave it with their punk attitude.
Next up on that same stage at 5.15pm, Scottish electronic music producer Nick Dow blurs the lines between club, ambient and experimental music, combining cinematic melodies with organic instrumentation and visceral textures, enveloping the listener in a world of surging musical landscapes.
After 6pm, when the festival becomes ticketed, things really start to ramp up.
At 6.30pm in the Crane Shed, Cosmic Dance present Duality, a contemporary Bharatanatyam duet that challenges traditional expectations of the dance form.
Also at 6:30pm (and again at 7:40pm) by the Locker Room, check out Eszter Marsalko‘s “We have all been here – now into the light” – a multi-disciplinary installation and performance, combining video and audio work with short live encounters. Weaving a web through moments in time and taking the shape of a conceptual/magical biography of a place, the work explores moments from the site’s past, present and imagined future.
Alternatively you may head to the Jack Daniels Stage at 6:30pm for Humour. Their first release ‘Yeah, Mud!’ gained critical acclaim from NME, Clash Magazine, DIY, Dork and more. With two EPs released to date, they have now announced their debut album Learning Greek set for release in August 2025.
At 7pm in the Machine Room, Edinburgh-based collective Slow Karma are built around the electrifying live stylings of CJ Stevenson (guitar/ keys), Kyle Grieve (drums) & Jack Elliot (electric bass), the studio prowess of Dave Oscillation (production/keys), and an extended family of musicians and artists.
Also at 7pm on The Factory Floor, ‘Ghost in the Machine’ is a site-responsive performance developed by Jill Martin Boualaxai. The piece blends physical theatre, dance, live drumming, visual art, and costume, evolving over time into performance drawings and sculptural traces that blur the boundaries between ritual, history, and the factory’s own mythology.
Head to the Crane Shed, home to our Dance Space, at 7.45pm for ELELEI, a collaboration between artists Sabrina Gargano (Barletta, Italy) and Rafa Jagat (Valencia), combining dance and theatre to create a single disciplinary language. Sabrina presents their second work, SOY MADERA, a work that aims to deepen the concept of anger in the female universe as a physical and emotional state and as a driving force that never stops.
Back at the Jack Daneiels Stage for 7.45pm, Y is a genre-defying band founded by Adam Brennan and Sophie Coppin, offering an eclectic, unpredictable sound that is playfully described as “wonk rock,” “Gameboy thrash,” and even “Egyptian wedding music.”
Then at 8pm in the Long Room, Australian-born poet, comedian and musician Josh Cake has participated in festivals for more than 10 years and most recently was named 2025 Poet of the Year by Livewire Global Awards. His poetry navigates the chronology of how humans relate to nature by bearing witness to past and present climate collapse events while imagining a future of disempowerment for people. In his work, he examines themes such as the human urge to construct borders against and around natural environments and our capacity to perceive the urgency of climate action and ongoing deterioration of the human lifestyle of consumption.
You’re probably hungry by now, so pop outside to sample the delights from our hot street food traders.
Then head back into the Machine Room for 8:30pm for Bee Asha, a genre blending spoken word artist, rapper and singer. Expect storytelling and songs that will have you both lyrically moved and make you want to move your hips. Asha has been dubbed one of the most interesting creatives in Scotland by The List UK and was last year shortlisted for BBC introducing Scottish Act of the year as well as having her album Goodbye, Gracious Longlisted for the Scottish Album of the year.
Then at 9:15pm, head to the Crane Shed to visit the Dance Space, powered by FunktionCreep. Here you’ll witness ‘SPECTRAL’ – a powerful and visually stunning immersive experience. Lit up by a fusion of light and lasers, the performance begins on the warehouse floor before performers spin 30 feet into the air, capturing the essence of labour and its transformation into something transcendent. A live soundtrack embraces the cavernous reverb of the performance space, layering field recordings with intricate synths and polyrhythms.
Alternatively, we’ve got MC Yallah & Debmaster on the Jack Daniels Stage. Kenyan by heritag, but born and raised in Kampala, where she is a key member of the big Nyege Nyege crew, incredible rapper MC Yallah has been on the hip-hop scene for nearly 20 years. A combination of conscious and futuristic hip-hop, grime, punk and trap, her signature style is the rare, rapid and tightly controlled flow delivered in one or more languages (Kiswahili, Luganda, English and Luo). Fierce and intense, the lyrics draw from real-life experiences and often address women’s issues spreading a powerful message of integrity and self-determination.
Get ready for a truly memorable final night. At 10pm in the Machine Room, we’re delighted to host the acclaimed Ishmael Ensemble, offering an array of sonic scenery from lush cinematic soundscapes to raucous peaks of psychedelia that received high praise from listeners & journalists alike.
Or on the Factory Floor, our final creative collaboration of the festival, Production Line of Dreams is a poetic and psychedelic ensemble blending soundscapes, spoken word, and rhythmic loops to reflect factory production cycles. Featuring bassist Ruairidh Morrison, synth and vocals by Gloria, percussion by Daniel Hill, and poet Iona Lee, the performance mirrors the repetitive rhythms of labour, incorporating field recordings from the site and hypnotic musical structures to create an immersive, trance-like experience.
So join us for our final night of Hidden Door 2025 – tickets on sale here.
