Brat Belfast: How dance music reclaimed the city.
The 7th of June 2024 was a monumental day in my taste of music. Exams had finished, Botanic days were becoming daily occurrences and Charli XCX had just released the album of the summer. The days tasted of sun-cream, Kopperberg ciders and Club classics. As much as dance music has been sensational within Belfast for years, it was always a part of my music taste that had been repressed to the 90’s big hits of The Prodigy and Basement Jaxx; but Brat summer changed that. Electronic music weaved its way into my daily mixes, with Mall Grab, Kettama and Fred Again kicking off a new-found desire for music that you can feel pulsing in your chest.
For years Belfast hosted a rave scene like no other, with people travelling car and wide to attend nights in the Telegraph or venturing to festivals like AVA and Emerge but it always felt like a place for fans of techno or hardstyle. Mainstream pop had drifted toward muted minimalism and algorithm-friendly melancholy and the chaos of the dancefloor felt absent from chart music. Then suddenly, everything changed. The charting albums and songs were that of Charli XCX’s mixes, and pop music became that of abrasive synths borrowed from the ancient texts of dance music. Underground rave culture was popping up in smaller venues again, and the lines between that of pop culture and rave culture have thankfully become blurred.
As much as Brat feels like that of a cultural reset for radio pop, it was really just the timing that blessed its resurgence. The appeal of electronic music has always been rooted in a community of sweat, volume, crowded rooms and collective release and dance music thrives during periods where culture feels unstable.
In Belfast, AVA Festival has become one of the defining electronic music festivals in Europe. Originally launched in 2015, AVA has steadily transformed Belfast into a serious destination for dance and experimental electronic music with the festival now attracting international artists while continuing to platform local DJs, producers and visual artists. Its growth reflects how deeply embedded rave culture has become within the city’s creative identity, but what makes Belfast particularly interesting is how naturally electronic music exists alongside the city’s political and cultural identity.
Artists like KETTAMA channel raw rave energy through distinctly Irish perspectives, while acts such as BICEP helped prove that producers from Northern Ireland could shape global dance music rather than simply participate in it. AVA’s success demonstrates that Belfast no longer feels peripheral to electronic culture, instead feeling central to it.
Social media has also helped with the acceleration of this convergence. TikTok and Instagram have transformed dance music aesthetics into lifestyle branding, but have also made underground scenes more accessible. Boiler Room clips circulate globally within hours and AVA line-ups reach audiences far beyond Belfast; a DJ playing to 300 people in Dublin can suddenly gain international recognition through one viral set. The internet flattened the distance between local scenes and global audiences, and dance-trends became the new norm.
You can hear it in the rise of artists like Princess Glitoris, whose sets have become synonymous with the city’s new underground energy. Her sound is fast, tribal, punishing techno softened occasionally by euphoric trance textures and feels curated for sweaty, packed out rooms and low ceilings. Belfast club culture for years was often male-dominated and hesitant to evolve past nostalgia but the new wave is different. It’s queer-led, politically aware and far more open about creating safer, more inclusive dancefloors. DJs like Princess Glitoris are part of a broader shift where identity and nightlife are no longer separated, and proves the notion that music has no labels when it comes to listening.
Similarly, as an artist who is only in his early twenties, OJ Wilson has already played festivals like Longitude and Shine while earning repeat bookings at Hï Ibiza; but what makes Wilson stand out is his refusal to stay confined to one sound. His sets blend Balearic house with disco textures and rolling techno percussion while still carrying traces of Belfast club culture and there’s a cinematic quality to his approach that feels influenced as much by Belfast’s emotional grey weather as by Ibiza sunsets. This blend invites all, whether hot and sweaty in a 150 person capacity room or sun-burnt and drunk on sound in Ibiza. The music, again, has no labels when it comes to listeners and this idea is central to why the resurgence of dance has become mainstream.
What once felt like separate worlds of the underground and the mainstream, the sweaty Belfast basement and the festival main stage have finally collapsed into one another and as long as there are crowded dancefloors, blown-out speakers and people searching for something real to lose themselves in, dance music will keep finding its way back to the centre of culture.