Image: Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz. Laurie Anderson with Lonnie Holley, Maria Somerville, Beatrice Dillon, Elaine Howley, Lauren Duffus at the Roundhouse, Sat 8 Nov, 19:00. pitchforkmusicfestival.co.uk

From the punk-fuelled DIY energy of Exeter’s Cavern to curating landmark shows at the Barbican, Southbank Centre, and Roundhouse, Dan Monsell has quietly become one of the most influential figures shaping London’s live music landscape. As Director of FORM and Festival Director of Pitchfork Music Festival London, his curatorial compass is guided by integrity, curiosity, and a genuine love for discovery. Monsell’s ethos is simple but radical: take risks, nurture community, and create moments that matter. This year’s festival – spanning venues across the city – brings together boundary-pushers like Laurie Anderson, Marie Davidson, and Beatrice Dillon, alongside next-wave innovators. For Monsell, the future of live music depends on protecting grassroots spaces, supporting artists at every level, and trusting audiences to come along for the ride – proving that great taste needn’t mean playing it safe.

Let’s start at the beginning. What’s your music origin story – those early discoveries as a kid, the first record or tape you bought, the gig that blew your mind, and the moment you realised: this is it, I want to work in live music?

I actually started as a (largely unsuccessful, but certainly passionate) musician. I was lucky enough to get early experiences of touring and venues and I quickly realised through doing so that the best place for me was to be more in the organisational side of live music – to really build a life around it all. Early gigs in the Exeter Cavern – a very punk rock venue where I grew up – made me excited for what venues and people who put gigs on could do for fostering community and creativity in cities, and ultimately creating memorable moments for people. The place and gigs were a hub for me and all my friends, and I loved the idea of trying to be more involved and part of that in some way, and hopefully contributing to creating a memorable vibe.

Rockfeedback to FORM and Pitchfork London – that’s quite a journey. What values or ideas have stayed constant for you across all those chapters? And how do they shape the kind of artists and experiences you champion today?

I hope I’ve been able to be consistent in working with and presenting music and important artists that are some of the most interesting in genre and exceptionally varied, across the board, throughout! Ultimately working with passion and closely with acts to create the ideal moments of performance and audiences to ensure everyone is having hugely memorable and great experiences. Hopefully that’s something I’ve not swayed from! Whether it’s a show for 100 people or a big huge venue aspect, I think there’s always so much scope to make things exciting and also platform artists in different ways. I always try and stay engaged with all different types of stuff happening across different genres and what people think are working particularly well.

Image: Marie Davidson, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, RIP Magic at Fabric, Thur, 6 Nov, 19:00. pitchforkmusicfestival.co.uk

Pitchfork’s audience is famously discerning – some might say it’s a festival for people with really good taste. (No pressure.) How do you and your team go about programming for such a musically literate crowd while still keeping things surprising?

We feel very privileged to be a type of physical manifestation of what is still the most trusted editorial voice in a fast-moving music media landscape. I think we’ve seen that when we programme the artists who are most celebrated and supported on the site, it reacts really well. It’s nice to draw the link between those things and then supplement with other acts around them in the line-up. We’re lucky to have a really great crowd who seem keen to enjoy established and new acts alongside one another. This allows us some scope to keep things surprising by platforming lesser known artists with the more established names.

Can you talk us through the creative relationship between the Pitchfork website and the festival? How does the editorial voice feed into the line-up, and vice versa?

Following the success of the American and Paris events we were delighted that Pitchfork were keen to launch something in the UK – one of their key spots of readership globally. We have regular conversations with the Editorial team as we programme the event to ensure some of the acts that we’re presenting feel a great fit all round, it’s been a great collaboration and one we’re really thankful of it. The exciting difference is there is always a bit of a slant to all in it being a UK event and what works here, so we try and find the right way to give it that feel alongside all their international coverage.

Image: Oklou, Erika de Casier, Malibu, Nick León, Loukeman, holybones at the Roundhouse, Fri 7 Nov, 18:00. pitchforkmusicfestival.co.uk

This year’s line-up features an incredible mix – from Marie Davidson’s hard-edged techno poetics to Laurie Anderson’s conceptual brilliance. What connects these worlds for you? What do they say about where music, art and performance intersect in 2025?

I think we try, and like Pitchfork.com, really cover all corners of the musical universe – and hopefully connect it by virtue of a real stamp of quality and excitement, whatever it is. I think there are so many amazing things happening in different, very far away edges of the musical sphere right now, and people are really happy to go to different things and enjoy them all. Hopefully we can get people into lots of different types of things and give them all varied experiences that make them come away being like “well that was great!“, whatever it was.

Image: Photo of shame, performing at Pitchfork Music Festival 2024.

You’ve said before that you’d rather take risks than play it safe. For someone coming to Pitchfork London for the first time, which act or event would you point them to – the one that might just change how they hear music?

I think hopefully as you mention some of the acts that we get to programme are often really boundary-pushing and hence known for getting really critically acclaimed, it does make us feel that hopefully we can put acts on that are maybe more ‘risky’ to programme in terms of having smaller audiences traditionally, or people not knowing them so much. That’s often seen with some of the acts lower down the bill hopefully.

It’s perhaps obvious amongst the line up this year but Laurie Anderson is a true musical pioneer, so would definitely point to her as an obvious choice Otherwise I actually think that so much on the line-up has scope to really impact people. Hard to pick just one more out otherwise!

Image: Photo of Dan Monsell.

The festival’s spread across multiple venues – from intimate clubs to bigger halls. What’s the thinking behind that format, and how does London’s geography shape the atmosphere of the week?

We actually launched the event just out of covid, so it was a real celebration to be back in venues again. I think born out of that it was a bit of a moment to really reflect on how we can make shows and events in venues across town feel as special and different as possible, and make something new and interesting in the diary for people to look forward to. We’ve evolved this to a week of unique events / one off moments taking over some amazing spaces the city has to offer like Barbican, Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall and other great venues, before moving into a more traditional multi-act festival line-up across the Roundhouse and Dalston on the weekend. It’s supposed to be an interesting journey for everyone hopefully across the week, and bring that festival feeling into the Autumn that can be more associated with the summer.

Speaking of London – what’s your take on the city’s live music ecosystem right now? What’s thriving, what needs protection, and what gives you hope for the future?

We need to continue to care deeply about our cultural establishments and venues in all forms! They need support and funding and people going to them and using them for all they can. The music scene is as vibrant as ever but is always in danger financially. It feels like everyone recognises this, which gives me hope. But I do feel a lot more needs to be done.

Pitchfork Music Festival London
4 – 8 November
Multiple venues across London
pitchforkmusicfestival.co.uk