Find out what acts to catch where and when with our quick look at the full festival timetable
With 12 stages and over 200 acts performing, including headliners like Fred Again, Tatsuro Yamashita, Haim and Vampire Weekend, there was bound to be a handful of clashes for eager festival-goers – but it looks like organisers have tried to mitigate some of the worst overlaps this year.
The Pyramid Garden Yoga workshop will be kicking off the festival at 8.30am on Friday, with Finnish five-piece US opening the Green Stage at 11am. Conversely, for anyone looking to start the day with a manic bang, Kyoto's Otoboke Beaver will be opening the White Stage at 12.10pm, and Ecca Vandal will follow them up on the same stage shortly after.
Tokyo-based hardcore outfit Brahman will take to the Green Stage from 3pm, with Ichiko Aoba performing at the Red Marquee from 4pm. Headlining the Green Stage on Friday night are Vaundy at 7pm and Fred Again at 9.10pm.
Heading up the Red Marquee and White stages on Friday night are OK GO, Suchmos, Perfume Genius and Tycho. Hiroko Yamamura will be closing out Planet Groove (Red Marquee's Friday late-night programming) from 3am until 5am.
Kicking off the second day of the festival at 11am will be Argentinian hip hop duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso on the Green Stage and Basque rock artist and cofounder of Kortatu, Fermin Muguruza, on the White Stage just after midday. As the temperature rises (or the rain falls, whichever way the weather decides to go), Irish indie quartet Newdad will head to the Red Marquee at 4pm, with the Ska Flames at Field of Heaven just after 5pm.
At night, Ginger Root will kick things into gear on the Red Marquee at 6pm, and James Blake, Tatsuro Yamashita and Vulfpeck will close the Green Stage. Into the wee hours, Fourtet finishes up at the White Stage just as Australia's Confidence Man kick-starts the late-night programming at Tribal Circus from 11.30pm. Pasocon Music Club will wrap things up there from 4am.
For better or worse, bleary eyes will awake to the sounds of bagpipes with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers opening the Green Stage at 11am on Sunday. Shortly after, Tokyo indie artists will be setting the tone for the rest of the day with She Her Her Hers at Field of Heaven from 11.30am and Mono no Aware opening the White Stage from 12.30pm.
Later on, Grace Bowers will be heading to the Field of Heaven shortly after 3pm, and English quartet English Teacher will make their debut Fuji Rock appearance at the Red Marquee at 4pm. The Hives at Red Marquee clash directly with Tokyo's Hitsuji Bungaku on the White Stage at 8.10pm.
Closing out the Green Stage on the final night will be Vampire Weekend at 9.10pm. Haim's White Stage closing set was pushed back by 20 minutes this year to 10.20pm to avoid too much overlap. For those making the most of the final night, international festival newcomer Atsuo the Pineapple Donkey will feature in Red Marquee's late-night Sunday Session from 2.35am, with Osaka DJ collective Fullhouse wrapping things up there from 3.30am.
Lastly, this year's Rookie A Go Go announcement includes Tokyo-based indie five-piece Yubiori, hip-hop duo EMNW, and underground rock-n-rollers Self-Destruction. The new Orange Echo stage is set to feature up-and-coming artists from around Asia, including Okinawa indie trio Home, Thailand's Yonlapa and South Korean artist Kim Oki.
For this year's full Fuji Rock timetable, including stages like Crystal Palace, Naeba Shokudo and Blue Galaxy, head to the Fuji Rock festival website.
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The Guardian
3 days ago
- The Guardian
‘They're rowdy. They're vibing. I rip my shirt off': the exploding career of Hanumankind, India's hottest rapper
Two weeks ago, halfway through his first ever UK show, Hanumankind instructed the crowd to mimic him by hopping to the right then to the left, back and forth, in unison. But the rapper from India slipped and fell, limping to the end of the gig in evident pain, kept upright by his DJ and inspired by the audience's singalong familiarity with his catalogue. 'We were ready to have a good time,' he sheepishly grins from an armchair at his record label's offices three days later. It turns out he has torn a ligament. 'It was a battle of internal turmoil. The show was like a fifth of what it was meant to be, but I gave it my all. London has a beautiful energy which gave me strength.' Even without the leg injury, the 32-year-old star, who was born Sooraj Cherukat, has reached a testing threshold in his short, explosive career. His tracks Big Dawgs and Run It Up, helped by action-movie music videos, have made him one of the most talked-about MCs in the world. A$AP Rocky and Fred Again are among his recent collaborators. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi even invited Cherukat to perform at an event in New York last September. But as a rare south Asian face in globally popular rap, he feels a certain responsibility. 'The past year has been hard,' he says. 'I'm trying to navigate through it.' What's more, although he expresses a deep pride about life in India, 'a lot of things are off. There is a mob mentality. There's a lot of divisiveness because of religion, background, caste. It doesn't sit well with me. I'm in a unique space to change the way people can think within my country.' Born in Malappuram, Kerala, which he remembers as a 'green, beautiful environment', Cherukat spent his childhood following his father's work abroad, from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia to Britain. 'We'd traverse different countries and I'd sing songs in whatever language I was picking up,' he says. 'Wherever I went, I had to get involved and be ready to leave. I learned to connect with people. That's why the power of the word is so important to me.' At the age of 10, he landed in Houston, Texas, and found a rare stability. It was the early 2000s and the city was an engine room for rap innovation. Cherukat's set his accent to a southern drawl. Already a fan of heavy metal – which makes sense given his grungy, rockstar leanings today – he became hooked on the local chopped-and-screwed subgenre pioneered by DJ Screw, Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat. In his teens he was 'burning CDs full of beats, riding around smoking blunts and hitting hard freestyles'. He returned to south India just before hitting 20. 'The only place I had roots,' he says. He completed a university degree in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, before working a corporate job in the tech hub of Bengaluru. Seeing rap as 'a party thing, a way to de-stress and stay connected to the art form', he performed at open-mic nights, softening his US accent and perfecting his stage show for an Indian audience. 'Friends would come to watch and be like, 'Dude, you're not bad. You should lock in.'' So he did. At the end of 2019, Cherukat played his first festival: NH7 Weekender in Pune, Maharashtra. The crowd went wild, quickly morphing from a small handful into a packed moshpit. 'They're rowdy and they're fucking vibing,' he says. 'I rip my shirt off. I'm like, 'OK, I can do this!'' He quit his job and began plotting his next move, filling notebooks with lyrics throughout the pandemic. These are a blend of cheek and grit delivered with a flow that keeps respawning at different speeds and scales. Soon, Cherukat was signed by Def Jam India. Part of a movement to reject the remnants of British colonialism in favour of local expression, the proud, rebellious patchwork of Indian hip-hop encompasses the vast country's 'hundreds of languages, each as deeply rooted as the next', Cherukat explains. 'Someone who speaks Hindi or another regional language will give you a vast amount of depth and detail in what they're doing.' His decision to rap mostly in English therefore came with risks of being perceived as inauthentic at home, but it has certainly helped his global crossover. Besides, he has found other ways to communicate a homegrown aesthetic. Run It Up marches to the beat of Keralan chenda drums, while its video features martial artists from disparate corners of India. Cherukat performed it with a band of drummers at Coachella festival, his debut US gig. 'Most people don't know what is going on in my country,' he says. 'Maybe I can open up some doors, open up some eyes, break out of these bubbles and stereotypes.' Although not religious, Cherukat has a divine figure woven into his performing name. Over recent years, Hanuman, the simian-headed Hindu god of strength and devotion, has been employed everywhere from the car stickers of hypermasculine Indian nationalism to the bloody, satirical critique of Dev Patel's 2024 thriller, Monkey Man. Where does Hanumankind fit into this: traditionalist or progressive? 'I need to make music for myself first,' he says simply. 'But when you have a platform, you can bring about change through your words and actions.' Some fans were disappointed that he accepted the New York invitation from Modi – whose Hindu nationalist government has been accused of democratic backsliding and Islamophobia. Cherukat has defended his appearance, describing it as 'nothing political … We were called to represent the nation and we did that.' But today he claims his 'political ideology is pretty clear' to anyone who has been following his career. In one of his earliest singles, 2020's Catharsis, he rails against systemic corruption, police brutality and armed suppression of protest. 'I'm not just trying to speak to people who already agree with me,' he says. 'I'm trying to give people who are otherwise not going to be listening a chance to be like, 'OK, there is some logic to what he's saying.'' Monsoon Season, his new mixtape, is just out. It features the mellow likes of Holiday – performed on the massively popular YouTube series Colors – as well as raucous collaborations with US rap luminaries Denzel Curry and Maxo Kream. It is less a narrative album, more a compilation, with songs gathered over the years before the spotlight shone on him. 'I have a lot of memories of coming into Kerala during the monsoon,' says Cherukat of the project's name. 'You can have days where things are absolutely reckless, flooded, out of control. There can be days where you get introspective and think about life. There are days where you love the rain: it feels good, there's that smell in the air when it hits the mud, the soil, the flowers. Your senses are heightened. You can fall in love with that. Or it can ruin all your plans and you hate it.' Cherukat's knee will take some time to recover before he embarks on a North American tour later this year. It's clear he needs a break: not just to heal, but to continue processing fame, adapt to its changes and return to the studio. 'I'm still adjusting,' he says. 'The attention, the conversation, the responsibility, the lifestyle, all this shit. Things have been a little haywire. So I just want to go back to the source – and make music.' Monsoon Season is out now on Capitol Records/Def Jam India
The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
‘They're rowdy. They're vibing. I rip my shirt off': the exploding career of Hanumankind, India's hottest rapper
Two weeks ago, halfway through his first ever UK show, Hanumankind instructed the crowd to mimic him by hopping to the right then to the left, back and forth, in unison. But the rapper from India slipped and fell, limping to the end of the gig in evident pain, kept upright by his DJ and inspired by the audience's singalong familiarity with his catalogue. 'We were ready to have a good time,' he sheepishly grins from an armchair at his record label's offices three days later. It turns out he has torn a ligament. 'It was a battle of internal turmoil. The show was like a fifth of what it was meant to be, but I gave it my all. London has a beautiful energy which gave me strength.' Even without the leg injury, the 32-year-old star, who was born Sooraj Cherukat, has reached a testing threshold in his short, explosive career. His tracks Big Dawgs and Run It Up, helped by action-movie music videos, have made him one of the most talked-about MCs in the world. A$AP Rocky and Fred Again are among his recent collaborators. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi even invited Cherukat to perform at an event in New York last September. But as a rare south Asian face in globally popular rap, he feels a certain responsibility. 'The past year has been hard,' he says. 'I'm trying to navigate through it.' What's more, although he expresses a deep pride about life in India, 'a lot of things are off. There is a mob mentality. There's a lot of divisiveness because of religion, background, caste. It doesn't sit well with me. I'm in a unique space to change the way people can think within my country.' Born in Malappuram, Kerala, which he remembers as a 'green, beautiful environment', Cherukat spent his childhood following his father's work abroad, from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia to Britain. 'We'd traverse different countries and I'd sing songs in whatever language I was picking up,' he says. 'Wherever I went, I had to get involved and be ready to leave. I learned to connect with people. That's why the power of the word is so important to me.' At the age of 10, he landed in Houston, Texas, and found a rare stability. It was the early 2000s and the city was an engine room for rap innovation. Cherukat's set his accent to a southern drawl. Already a fan of heavy metal – which makes sense given his grungy, rockstar leanings today – he became hooked on the local chopped-and-screwed subgenre pioneered by DJ Screw, Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat. In his teens he was 'burning CDs full of beats, riding around smoking blunts and hitting hard freestyles'. He returned to south India just before hitting 20. 'The only place I had roots,' he says. He completed a university degree in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, before working a corporate job in the tech hub of Bengaluru. Seeing rap as 'a party thing, a way to de-stress and stay connected to the art form', he performed at open-mic nights, softening his US accent and perfecting his stage show for an Indian audience. 'Friends would come to watch and be like, 'Dude, you're not bad. You should lock in.'' So he did. At the end of 2019, Cherukat played his first festival: NH7 Weekender in Pune, Maharashtra. The crowd went wild, quickly morphing from a small handful into a packed moshpit. 'They're rowdy and they're fucking vibing,' he says. 'I rip my shirt off. I'm like, 'OK, I can do this!'' He quit his job and began plotting his next move, filling notebooks with lyrics throughout the pandemic. These are a blend of cheek and grit delivered with a flow that keeps respawning at different speeds and scales. Soon, Cherukat was signed by Def Jam India. Part of a movement to reject the remnants of British colonialism in favour of local expression, the proud, rebellious patchwork of Indian hip-hop encompasses the vast country's 'hundreds of languages, each as deeply rooted as the next', Cherukat explains. 'Someone who speaks Hindi or another regional language will give you a vast amount of depth and detail in what they're doing.' His decision to rap mostly in English therefore came with risks of being perceived as inauthentic at home, but it has certainly helped his global crossover. Besides, he has found other ways to communicate a homegrown aesthetic. Run It Up marches to the beat of Keralan chenda drums, while its video features martial artists from disparate corners of India. Cherukat performed it with a band of drummers at Coachella festival, his debut US gig. 'Most people don't know what is going on in my country,' he says. 'Maybe I can open up some doors, open up some eyes, break out of these bubbles and stereotypes.' Although not religious, Cherukat has a divine figure woven into his performing name. Over recent years, Hanuman, the simian-headed Hindu god of strength and devotion, has been employed everywhere from the car stickers of hypermasculine Indian nationalism to the bloody, satirical critique of Dev Patel's 2024 thriller, Monkey Man. Where does Hanumankind fit into this: traditionalist or progressive? 'I need to make music for myself first,' he says simply. 'But when you have a platform, you can bring about change through your words and actions.' Some fans were disappointed that he accepted the New York invitation from Modi – whose Hindu nationalist government has been accused of democratic backsliding and Islamophobia. Cherukat has defended his appearance, describing it as 'nothing political … We were called to represent the nation and we did that.' But today he claims his 'political ideology is pretty clear' to anyone who has been following his career. In one of his earliest singles, 2020's Catharsis, he rails against systemic corruption, police brutality and armed suppression of protest. 'I'm not just trying to speak to people who already agree with me,' he says. 'I'm trying to give people who are otherwise not going to be listening a chance to be like, 'OK, there is some logic to what he's saying.'' Monsoon Season, his new mixtape, is just out. It features the mellow likes of Holiday – performed on the massively popular YouTube series Colors – as well as raucous collaborations with US rap luminaries Denzel Curry and Maxo Kream. It is less a narrative album, more a compilation, with songs gathered over the years before the spotlight shone on him. 'I have a lot of memories of coming into Kerala during the monsoon,' says Cherukat of the project's name. 'You can have days where things are absolutely reckless, flooded, out of control. There can be days where you get introspective and think about life. There are days where you love the rain: it feels good, there's that smell in the air when it hits the mud, the soil, the flowers. Your senses are heightened. You can fall in love with that. Or it can ruin all your plans and you hate it.' Cherukat's knee will take some time to recover before he embarks on a North American tour later this year. It's clear he needs a break: not just to heal, but to continue processing fame, adapt to its changes and return to the studio. 'I'm still adjusting,' he says. 'The attention, the conversation, the responsibility, the lifestyle, all this shit. Things have been a little haywire. So I just want to go back to the source – and make music.' Monsoon Season is out now on Capitol Records/Def Jam India
Time Out
04-07-2025
- Time Out
Find out what acts to catch where and when with our quick look at the full festival timetable
The wait is over: Fuji Rock Festival organisers have published the official timetable for 2025. The announcement comes after a big two weeks of final line-up drops for each of the four major stages: Green Stage, Red Marquee, White Stage, and Field of Heaven. Also announced today was the introduction of the brand-new Orange Echo stage and this year's Rookie A Go Go showcasing artists. With 12 stages and over 200 acts performing, including headliners like Fred Again, Tatsuro Yamashita, Haim and Vampire Weekend, there was bound to be a handful of clashes for eager festival-goers – but it looks like organisers have tried to mitigate some of the worst overlaps this year. The Pyramid Garden Yoga workshop will be kicking off the festival at 8.30am on Friday, with Finnish five-piece US opening the Green Stage at 11am. Conversely, for anyone looking to start the day with a manic bang, Kyoto's Otoboke Beaver will be opening the White Stage at 12.10pm, and Ecca Vandal will follow them up on the same stage shortly after. Tokyo-based hardcore outfit Brahman will take to the Green Stage from 3pm, with Ichiko Aoba performing at the Red Marquee from 4pm. Headlining the Green Stage on Friday night are Vaundy at 7pm and Fred Again at 9.10pm. Heading up the Red Marquee and White stages on Friday night are OK GO, Suchmos, Perfume Genius and Tycho. Hiroko Yamamura will be closing out Planet Groove (Red Marquee's Friday late-night programming) from 3am until 5am. Kicking off the second day of the festival at 11am will be Argentinian hip hop duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso on the Green Stage and Basque rock artist and cofounder of Kortatu, Fermin Muguruza, on the White Stage just after midday. As the temperature rises (or the rain falls, whichever way the weather decides to go), Irish indie quartet Newdad will head to the Red Marquee at 4pm, with the Ska Flames at Field of Heaven just after 5pm. At night, Ginger Root will kick things into gear on the Red Marquee at 6pm, and James Blake, Tatsuro Yamashita and Vulfpeck will close the Green Stage. Into the wee hours, Fourtet finishes up at the White Stage just as Australia's Confidence Man kick-starts the late-night programming at Tribal Circus from 11.30pm. Pasocon Music Club will wrap things up there from 4am. For better or worse, bleary eyes will awake to the sounds of bagpipes with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers opening the Green Stage at 11am on Sunday. Shortly after, Tokyo indie artists will be setting the tone for the rest of the day with She Her Her Hers at Field of Heaven from 11.30am and Mono no Aware opening the White Stage from 12.30pm. Later on, Grace Bowers will be heading to the Field of Heaven shortly after 3pm, and English quartet English Teacher will make their debut Fuji Rock appearance at the Red Marquee at 4pm. The Hives at Red Marquee clash directly with Tokyo's Hitsuji Bungaku on the White Stage at 8.10pm. Closing out the Green Stage on the final night will be Vampire Weekend at 9.10pm. Haim's White Stage closing set was pushed back by 20 minutes this year to 10.20pm to avoid too much overlap. For those making the most of the final night, international festival newcomer Atsuo the Pineapple Donkey will feature in Red Marquee's late-night Sunday Session from 2.35am, with Osaka DJ collective Fullhouse wrapping things up there from 3.30am. Lastly, this year's Rookie A Go Go announcement includes Tokyo-based indie five-piece Yubiori, hip-hop duo EMNW, and underground rock-n-rollers Self-Destruction. The new Orange Echo stage is set to feature up-and-coming artists from around Asia, including Okinawa indie trio Home, Thailand's Yonlapa and South Korean artist Kim Oki. For this year's full Fuji Rock timetable, including stages like Crystal Palace, Naeba Shokudo and Blue Galaxy, head to the Fuji Rock festival website.
