A FAST rising indie band are set to make their Japanese festival debut... live from Bury.

Mercury Machine will live stream two performances from The Met for the Kansai Music Conference in Osaka.

The sets will be band’s first shows in both Bury and Japan, and will feature some special guests.

Keyboard player, Kade Daniels said: “Obviously we’d rather have been over there playing our stuff live but there’s something really cool about doing this from Bury, we feel like we’re representing in some way.”

Formed in Manchester and inspired by the region's creative and technological heritage, Mercury Machine perform what they have self-described as Dark Electro Synth.

Their name is even inspired by one of the first computers to be built in the city.

2020 has been a big year for the five piece who released their acclaimed debut, self-titled album last year, and a follow up EP, Ascend, during lockdown.

They were then invited to play the KMC Music Conference this month.

For over ten years the event has seen artists and musicians from around the world perform in front of crowds of Japanese fans and industry representatives.

However, due to Covid-19, the festival has had to rethink its approach for 2020, and will now see bands from countries as diverse as Spain, Israel, South Africa and Azerbaijan live stream performances.

Mercury Machine drummer Gav Foley, who is from Bury, said: “We’re massive fans of Japanese culture and it was definitely a dream for us to go and play there and also see how people would react to our music, we were over the moon to be asked to do this to be honest.”

During lockdown The Met in Bury became a regional hub for live music streaming and online club nights ­— including becoming home to the United We Stream project.

Drawn by this pedigree, Mercury Machine will stream a half hour set from the venue from 2pm on Saturday, followed by a watching party, where you can chat to the band on-line whilst watching a second show back, at 8pm.

Guitarist Tim Burge said: “We really want our performance to stand out and also just to show some solidarity in a challenging time, so we’re going to be performing part of our set with Kaminari UK who are a a Japanese style drumming group using traditional drums.

“We’re really looking forward to seeing how this works with our tunes, it definitely will be interesting.”

Tickets for the show, which also allow you to re-watch the set for one month afterwards, are £5 and are available from mercurymachine.veeps.com.