Rap radicals Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE are End of the Road’s leftfield Garden Stage headliners

Drawing a tighter, locked-in crowd, the rap veterans offered a performance which bucked the conventions of an End of the Road line-up. With ethereal electronic artist Sophia Stel, dancefloor disruptors Bassvictim and subversive rapper Fatboi Sherif all invited to perform at the festival’s 20^th anniversary edition, it underlines End of the Road’s ever-evolving reach.

Earl Sweatshirt – whose work since his Odd Future days has moved towards dense, abstract production and elliptical wordplay – was joined by introspective wordsmith and quintessential old soul MIKE for their collaborative double album Pompeii // Utility released in April. The project was fully produced by New York visionaries SURF GANG.

Though the scale was smaller than Pulp’s conflicting headline performance, Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE unlocked a younger, rhapsodic crowd which proves that End of the Road is changing with the world around it.