Live concert photography of The Gluts, Discovery Zone and Clone performing at 2022's New Colossus Festival.

Live Concert Photography: New Colossus Festival 2022: The Gluts, Discovery Zone and Clone at Piano’s 3/12/22

Photographers often have a treasure trove of unedited and unpublished photos. I’m definitely not an exception. Over the course of this site’s almost 14 year history, I’ve managed to amass a collection of unedited and unpublished photos on a number of dead and malfunctioning external hard drives, as well as some on working hard drives. With those malfunctioning drives, I’ve been lucky to have valuable files restored and placed on an entirely new external hard drive. And with some much-needed downtime, I will occasionally go through those archives, edit and post.

If you’ve been frequenting this site during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, you might recall that with all of that free time, and not much else to do, I went through a decade-long archive of photos. And with the close of 2023, I wanted to finish out an old hard drive. (Out with the old, in with the new, right?)

Back in March 2022, I covered the New Colossus Festival. Co-founded back in 2018 by three New York music industry vets and longtime friends, former Lorimer Beacon founder and head Mike Bell, Kanine Records‘ founder and label head Lio Kanine and Kepler Events ‘ and Dedstrange Records co-founder Steven Matrick, The New Colossus Festival over the course of the past couple of years has featured several hundred handpicked, emerging indie bands and artists from Canada, the UK, the European Union, Singapore, Hong Kong and of course, the US.

Since its founding, the festival has quickly established itself as the first stop in New York and in the US for a growing number of emerging and buzz worthy for a growing number of emerging and buzz worthy international artists. Notable festival alumni include a number of JOVM mainstays including GIFT, Penelope Isles, The Orielles, Thus Love, as well as Pom Poko, Pom Pom Squad, Sid Simons, Sobs, Water From Your Eyes, Peel Dream Magazine, Kiwi Jr., and a growing list of others.

During the 2022 edition’s fourth night, I bounced back and forth between several venues across the Lower East Side, including multiple stops at Piano’s for different showcases and bands. I was back at Piano’s to catch Milan-based punks The Gluts, who sadly were missing their frontman due to COVID protocols. But the show goes on, and the remaining band members played a furious ripper of a set featuring instrumental versions of material off their impressive 2021 effort Ungrateful Heart. Discovery Zone played a set of trippy yet dance-floor friendly electro pop. Local noise rock outfit Clone, a Dead Leaf Echo side project also played a ripper of a set.

As always, photos are below.