Noise Pop Festival 2026 Presents: J Robbins plays Burning Airlines * KID COPS Minus Numbers — Guitarist/singer and indie rock stalwart J. Robbins formed the band Burning Airlines with drummer Peter Moffett, an old friend and fellow Government Issue alumnus, in late 1998, almost immediately after the breakup of Robbins’ longest-running and best known band Jawbox. Bill Barbot, who had been the other guitarist in Jawbox, was tapped by Robbins to play bass. This lineup made one record, Mission:Control!, for Dischord-adjacent indie label DeSoto Records, before Barbot decided to depart the rock life to start a web design company. Mike Harbin then joined on bass for the rest of the band’s tenure, and this lineup made the second Burning Airlines record, Identikit, and toured far more extensively, including trips to Europe and Japan, and US runs with Rival Schools, Braid, Promise Ring, and even the Buzzcocks, to name just a few, before disbanding in October 2001. Burning Airlines may have never quite escaped Jawbox’s shadow in its own time, but BA was a unique band whose music picked up where Jawbox left off, moving into areas equally more pop, more rock, more melodic, and more experimental. With the German label Thirty Something reissuing both records on vinyl in 2025, J. Robbins (band), with Robbins and Moffett having been 2/3 of the BA lineup, and bassist Brooks Harlan ably filling the shoes of Barbot and Harbin, is playing a small number of Burning Airlines themed shows to celebrate. — KID COPS: After the dissolution of Chico, CA math-rock duo (the) Americas, longtime musical collaborators guitarist/vocalist Travis Wuerthner and drummer Casey Deitz had a vision of a new band and a new sound. ‍ Keeping some key fundamentals—live guitar looping and layering in sync with fiery drumming—while shifting away from the sprawling “anything goes” approach of their previous outfit, the duo embraced the bass guitar (written and performed by Casey) and opted for a more aggressive, trimmed down, direct approach to songwriting. — Formed on the cusp of the pandemic in San Francisco, Minus Numbers is rooted in the  post-hardcore landscape of the '90s but unburdened by genre and era. Instead, they carve a new path, one where heaviness becomes both an anchor and release, and every note and lyric carries the weight of stories once left unspoken. Reid Black (bass), Michael Garceau (vocals), Randy Johnson (guitar), and Dennis Remsing (drums) bring a collective history to the table, three of them hailing from the influential Orange County post-hardcore outfit Drift Again.