By now, there's a good chance you will have heard of Antony Szmierek - the Mancunian poet who has gained a massive following with his mix of electronic beats and spoken word verses. His debut album Service Station at the End of the Universe stood out among all the great music that graced last year. Now, supporting his follow-up record Recording Birdsong, Antony has gone on a record store tour giving new and established fans an increasingly rare chance to see him in intimate venues...
Rough Trade, secretly, has been my favourite Nottingham music venue for years. There is such a vibe to that small space that you can’t really pin down. At a time where music spaces get cleaner and cleaner and more polished and polished, I’ve always appreciated the fact that Rough Trade is… well… a little rough around the edges - and if you say you’ve never spent an uncomfortable amount of time staring around the room at the countless names (some famous, some not) that have visited that tiny venue, I know you’re not being truthful.
When Antony came on stage, you could feel the absolute concentrated coolness seeping off the man. Throughout the show he controlled the room in a way hard to describe. Through technical difficulties and monologues on his knowledge on the location of Kaiju themed hotels, he held every person in the palm of his hand.
Far too often I’ve seen bands and artists who simply flow through songs, not stopping to acknowledge “Hey… I’m on stage in front of all these people”. So it’s nice to see an artist so present in his surroundings and so charismatic that he can make a shrieking microphone error a fun event.
Through the seven-song set, there was not a damp moment, not a moment that I felt tired or checked my phone to calculate how long was left - I was completely enthralled by his tracks. The mix of, as I said before, the dazzling beats and his poetry on top really stuck with me, and I know it will have for a lot of others, too.
The standout song performance-wise was Seminal, with its live delay vocals being really captivating in the best way possible.
As an overall, it is hard to actually describe this show apart from just gloating about how absolutely amazing it was, from the crowd to the performance, from the venue to the vibes... everything just clicked together in such a perfect way that has to be seen to be believed. Despite Antony not knowing the location of the Godzilla Hotel he named a song after, he certainly knows his place in music: the poet laureate of the jilted generation. Antony Szmierek is a revolution that has to be seen to be believed.
Antony Szmeriek performed at Rough Trade Nottingham on 24 August 2026
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