Live at Kirkstall Abbey: Loyle Carner

An all-day celebration of music and culture just outside Leeds city centre, ‘Above All Else’ is a new event from independent Leeds promoters Futuresound with forward-thinking curation at its heart that puts music, arts and culture above all else.

Released last summer, Loyle Carner’s fourth full-length album Hopefully! reasserted his position at the forefront of the UK’s intellectual and emotionally-charged hip hop movement. Focused as ever on familial bonds, this latest album centres on his own young family and how a sense of fatherhood has helped him reflect on the choices made in his own upbringing. Samples of children’s laughter trill under the artist’s trademark laconic wordplay and blissed-out backbeats whilst a newfound, bracingly frank delivery finds Loyle Carner laying bare daily struggles and existential uncertainties that come with newfound family responsibilities. 

Following on from multiple Mercury Music Prize nominations and BRIT award nominations, opening Hopefully! became Loyle Carner’s highest-charting release to date and the artist celebrated its success with a headline world tour that saw four back to back sold-out shows at 02 Academy Brixton in his beloved London, as well as a truly special headline performance on Glastonbury Festival’s iconic The Other Stage.

With a body of work that is as affectingly personal as it is uplifting and universal, a decade into his career Loyle Carner’s impact has never been clearer: the same local hero, now rightly regarded as one of the UK’s most vital voices and one of this generation’s most important young artists. 

Joining Loyle Carner at ‘Above All Else’ will be a full supporting line-up including acclaimed Grammy and Ivor-Novello award nominated songwriter Jordan Rakei and  Kokoroko, the London based sextet famed for blending  jazz, highlife, afrobeat, soul and diasporic grooves into one of the most exciting live shows around today. Completing the line-up is much-hyped Birmingham rapper Kofi Stone and rising Dublin collective Bricknasty.  

‘Above All Else’ is part of Live At Kirkstall Abbey. Held in the grounds of the iconic Kirkstall Abbey, the outdoor concert series first took place in 2024.