Uncle Acid Drummer Fires Back After Roskilde Cuts Their Set Short on Gorillaz’s Request

Roskilde has a way of drawing drama out of Damon Albarn. In 2015, he was dragged offstage after overrunning an Africa Express set. Three years later, Del the Funky Homosapien tumbled into the pit during a Gorillaz show. This year, the friction came from a neighbouring stage, and it was Albarn wielding the leverage.

Fifteen minutes into Gorillaz’s headline slot on the Orange stage, the English psych band Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats began their set on Legune. The wind carried Uncle Acid’s sound across the festival grounds, bleeding audibly into Gorillaz’s quieter moments. “Is it supposed to be possible for me to hear the other music so clearly?” Albarn reportedly asked the crowd. “We can just stop playing and listen to the other thing instead.” Roskilde sided with the headliner: Uncle Acid’s set was killed after half an hour.

Drummer Jon Rice did not keep his disappointment quiet. In an Instagram story, he wrote that Gorillaz “decided to throw a bitch fit, threatening to pull their gig entirely if we didn’t stop playing.” He noted their front-of-house engineer stayed 2 dB below the mandated limit, and pointed out that the Cure—who headlined a previous night—played through faint bleed from the same stage without incident. In a statement, the festival called it “an incredibly unfortunate situation” caused by wind and technical conditions, not volume.

The episode reveals less about decibel meters than about power imbalances at the top of a festival bill. Uncle Acid lost half their set; Albarn got his silence.