Photos from Lush Spectra, Sheffield's Finest Avant-Garde Festival

Last weekend THUMP UK found ourselves hanging out with esteemed documentarian Louis Theroux. Ok, "hanging out with" is a bit of an exaggeration, but we did sit very close to him on the train, and we did stay in the same hotel as him, and we did tuck into a fantastic breakfast buffet a few tables down from the big man himself. While we tore into a third full English, Louis delicately leafed through the Sunday Telegraph.

We'd all traveled up north for a weekend in Sheffield. Louis was in town for the city's highly-regarded Doc/Fest , which sadly wasn't going to be screening our classic Jess Glynne hosted short film about Americans being into Disclosure. We were there to sup extraordinarily cheap pints, eat roast dinners stuffed inside buttered slabs of white bread, and experience some mindbending avant-garde music.

It was firm THUMP favourite Mark Fell who'd invited us up to the Steel City for an incredibly enjoyable and jolly jaunt. As part of the Sheffield Makes Music festival, Fell had been asked to curate an event taking place at the recently refurbished Samuel Worth Nonconformist Chapel, nestled away in the city's utterly gorgeous General Cemetery.

Lush Spectra —which stretched out over two days and nights—was Fell's celebration of "Diagrammatic music, focal listening, and non-linear time-consciousness," and it was a wonderful thing indeed. You can read more about the event, and an in-depth interview with Fell himself, later this on THUMP. For now, though, feast your eyes on the verdant photography of long-term THUMP contributor, Francisco Garcia .