LYNKS + VLURE + CIEL – KOMEDIA, BRIGHTON 28.2.23
The folks at DIY Magazine and Kilipresents have got together to put on a select 6-date UK tour featuring the rather wonderful LYNKS and very exciting VLURE, plus the addition of another support act. The first two dates of the tour had former Brighton resident Alexa Povey aka Circe, who released a number of terrific tunes including ‘Under My Skin’.
The tour kicked off in Leeds on 23rd February and headed off to Newcastle on the 24th and Glasgow on the 25th. Tonight saw them arrive in Brighton and play the Komedia on Gardner Street. From here they will conclude the tour by visiting Birmingham and Bristol.
The Brighton & Hove News Music Team have been fortunate to have previously seen all three of tonight’s bands in action on more than one previous occasion and were really looking forward to a special night out.
Tonight’s headliner LYNKS with his Lynks Shower Gel friends originally hailed from Bristol but now by all accounts is London based. We last caught up with uncompromisingly entertaining ‘masked drag monster’ and chums when they appeared at Patterns on 5th November last year as part of the ‘Mutations Festival’.
The 2020 lockdowns ironically did LYNKS a favour as the released output during that period was pretty epic! There was ‘Pandemic! (Self-Isolation Tape No.1)’, ‘Recession! (Self-Isolation Tape No.2)’, ‘Extra Sad Cream! (Self-Isolation Tape No.3)’ and ‘Arts & London! (ft. Mandy Visuals) | Lynks’ Self-Isolation Tape No.4’ to start with in the Spring. The seven tune ‘Smash Hits Vol.1 – EP’ and ‘Smash Hits Vol 1.5 – All Star Charity Remix Edition’ followed in the Summer, and then ‘Pedestrian At Best’ and ‘Brand New Face’ followed in the Autumn.
Come January 2021, the 5-track ‘Smash Hits, Vol. 2’ was unleashed. This was followed by ‘Silly Boy’ a year later and then last summer the trio of tracks on ‘MEN’ arrived. Surely now that 2023 is well and truly underway, there must be talk of a debut long-player somewhere in the pipeline?
Once you witness a live performance from LYNKS, it’s almost certain that you will never forget! It’s akin to a modern day version of Harris Glenn Milstead (aka Divine) Hi-NRG shows from a few decades ago, that I was honoured to have witnessed on a number of occasions, except LYNKS ones are far more energetic! Can’t believe Divine left us at a mere 42 (19th October 1945 – 7th March 1988)! If you’ve not heard ‘Native Love (Step By Step)’ then do yourself a favour right now and play it HERE. The best version being the eight and a half minute 12” remix, which I snapped up on ‘Black Sun’ Canadian import. Divine working in tandem with Bobby ‘O’ (aka Bobby Orlando) was the perfect partnership!
Lynks graced the Komedia stage bang on 9:30pm and ran through a memorable 14 tune set that lasted 58 minutes until 10:28pm. The stage was clear except a trio of mics out front, a small round table to the rear with a laptop on it and another microphone and a settee in the back middle of the stage, plus there was a lamp stage left (our right). Everything was colour coded accordingly, so last time out it was the leopard skin look, but clearly that is so out now and has been replaced by the tartan look.
Lynks was assisted by a trio of friends, Kate, Ella and Cameron, who collectively are ‘Lynks Shower Gel’. This trio burst on stage from our left and took up position, whereas Lynks, sporting his tartan gimp mask, was hiding behind the sofa until he popped up, jack-in-the-box style. The packed crowd of varying styles and ages went wild. Clearly tonight was going to be one of those!
They opened with the first of of three numbers from the 2022 ‘MEN’ EP, in the form of ‘Hey Joe (Relax)’, which was followed by the Lynks x Grove single ‘BBB’, with its earworm chorus of “I’m the big, bad bitch; I’m the big, big, bad, bad bitch; I’m the big, big, big, bad, bad, bad bitch…”. After this we had the first of (I believe) seven unreleased numbers, in the form of ‘Use It Or Lose It’.
Lynks and his chums must spend many a hour rehearing the dance routines for each number, as everything is perfectly choreographed, for maximum impact, even the facial expression of Lynks Shower Gel, obviously we couldn’t see Lynks’s as that his trademark, just like Nash The Slash kept his true identity hidden behind his face bandages.
The atmosphere throughout the room was of pure joy as this queer icon was winning many new friends who had not witnessed one of the raucous pop/dance (stage) cabaret shows before. The energy levels of the quartet was seen to be believed, but they could grab the occasional rest on the sofa as part of the routine.
My favourite Lynks number was up next, this being his rendition of the 2015 tune by Courtney Barnett ‘Pedestrian At Best’, which is from her debut album titled ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit’. This Bobby O and Patrick Cowley-esque version can be found on Lynks ‘Smash Hits, Vol. 2’ EP. For this number Lynks was being pedestrian himself and ventured into the crowd, which caused the euphoria to escalate. We are all here to have a great time and Lynks and chums dutifully oblige.
The unreleased ‘CPR’ was the next choice, which saw Cameron theatrically lying on the sofa in need of ‘CPR’, the trio successfully brought him back to life and they carried on with the unreleased ‘Sex With A Stranger’, which we are told was penned about ‘a meet’ on the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) having previously been agreed on the Tinder dating app. This tune reminded me of a speeded up version of the epic, but forgotten, 1980 synthpop single ‘Lawnchairs’ by the criminally underrated New York trio of Our Daughters Wedding.
You simply can’t watch an entertaining Lynks show without a Cheshire Cat grin on your face as a result of the comical lyrics that make us laugh. Arguably none more so than on ‘How To Make A Béchamel Sauce In 10 Steps (With Pictures)’, which is the actual recipe on how to do so with visual assistance from Lynks Shower Gel…“continue adding milk”, we all sang.
Warning! Two earworm alerts!……in the form of another unreleased number in the form of the Confidence Man-esque ‘Abomination’ and ‘Everyone’s Hot (And I’m Not)’, found on the ‘Smash Hits, Vol. 2’ EP. Twenty five year old Lynks again joined the punters during the as yet unreleased ‘I Feel Like Shit’, Cameron followed and the punters bounced, danced and sang. Mind you the punters went even more wild for the main set closing number, the Vengaboys-ish ‘Silly Boy’ taken from the 2022 ‘MEN’ EP.
There were two encore numbers for us this evening, those being the rather wonderful as yet to be released vintage sounding Electro 808 meets Kraftwerk’s ‘Numbers’ style track in the form of the ‘Lynks Things’, and finally ending with the cucumber munching ‘Str8 Acting’ (from 2020 ‘Smash Hits Vol.1’ EP). Our team stood at the front and Cameron, bless him, offered me a bite of his cucumber. That’s not code for anything by the way! The final act of the thrilling set was to let off two confetti cannons over the punters.
In summary, Lynks offers you the most fun that you can possibly have in public, unless you are “riding the DLR” that is!
From here LYNKS will be performing at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Friday 21st April as part of the ‘Aladdin Sane Live’ 50th anniversary reimagining of David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ album, which also features Nu Civilisation Orchestra, Anna Calvi, Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and Roxanne Tataei. It will be an evening filled will interpretations of the classic cuts: ‘Watch That Man’, ‘Aladdin Sane (1913–1938–197?)’, ‘Drive-In Saturday’, ‘Panic in Detroit’, ‘Cracked Actor’, ‘Time’, ‘The Prettiest Star’, ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’, ‘The Jean Genie’ and ‘Lady Grinning Soul’.
No doubt tickets will fly out of the door, so grab yours HERE.
LYNKS:
Lynks + ‘Lynks Shower Gel’:
Kate, Ella and Cameron
LYNKS setlist:
‘Hey Joe (Relax)’ (from 2022 ‘MEN’ EP)
‘BBB’ (from 2021 Lynks x Grove single)
‘Use It Or Lose It’ (unreleased)
‘Pedestrian At Best’ (from ‘Smash Hits, Vol. 2’ EP)
‘CPR’ (unreleased)
‘Perfect Human Specimen’ (from 2022 ‘MEN’ EP)
‘Sex With A Stranger’ (unreleased)
‘How To Make A Béchamel Sauce In 10 Steps (With Pictures)’ (unreleased)
‘Abomination’ (unreleased)
‘Everyone’s Hot (And I’m Not)’ (from ‘Smash Hits, Vol. 2’ EP)
‘I Feel Like Shit’ (unreleased)
‘Silly Boy’ (from 2022 ‘MEN’ EP)
(encore)
‘Lynks Things’ (unreleased)
‘Str8 Acting’ (from 2020 ‘Smash Hits Vol.1’ EP)
LYNKS music can be found on Bandcamp.
The Brighton & Hove News last caught up with post-punk quintet VLURE at ‘Rockaway Beach’ at Butlins Bognor Regis on Saturday 7th January. Prior to that we were blown away by their set on 12th May last year when they played on Brighton Palace Pier at Horatios as part of ‘The Great Escape‘. A couple of months earlier that had played at Chalk as support to White Lies, where for me they totally blew the headliners out of the water! Let’s put it this way, if you are a festival organiser and are looking for the next wave of solid up-and-coming acts that will totally engage and enthral the audience and leave them with memories for many a year, then you certainly can’t fault VLURE, they simply tick all of the boxes!
VLURE formed back in 2018, with a trio of them hailing from Glasgow, those being charismatic frontman Hamish Hutcheson, bassist Niall Goldie and guitarist Conor Goldie. Female keyboardist Alex Pearson comes from Reading and male drummer Carlo Kriekaard originated in The Hague in the Netherlands.
A year ago, last January, they dropped their 5 track ‘Euphoria’ EP, which took over the mantle from their terrific ‘Shattered Faith’ debut single release, which came out in March 2021. Their latest offering is their current single ‘Cut It’ which dropped on 20th January. I seriously think that it is about time for these guys to announce the release of a debut album, one in which I hope contains all of their so far released material.
I much prefer the physical hands-on formats of vinyl’s, cassettes and CD’s as opposed to downloads and streaming! But these must be priced accordingly. For instance the ‘Euphoria’ vinyl on their Bandcamp page is £16.99 and thus I had it in my head that this evening I was going to purchase it for around that or possibly an acceptable £15. However, I was informed that it was £20, which was a shock to the system at £4 per tune! Reluctantly I declined, which is a real shame. I suppose I could have gone around the venue collecting up a few discarded plastic beakers and taken them all to the bar to collect the £1 hiring fee on them, but that’s not cricket. Whilst I’m here, I would also note that the drinks here at the Komedia were more expensive than The Hope & Ruin, The Prince Albert, Green Door Store, Chalk, Concorde 2 etc. Two pints for £14.90 (including a £2 back refund if you remember or can be bothered), thus it’s still technically £12.90. Rant over……
This evening post-punk VLURE quintet took to the stage at 8:32pm to perform a mere seven song set which only lasted 29 minutes, until 9:01pm. This was after an intro tape of songs that sounded like they could have been made by Paris based French synthwave musician James Kent aka Perturbator, who I have also seen playing live in the early hours of the morning as part of ‘The Great Escape‘.
On my last two encounters with VLURE were introduced possibly by their manager who read out the ‘VLURE poem’ prior to the commencement of the music. Tonight it was just straight in with the banging choonz.
For me, this 30 minute VLURE set wasn’t enough, I could easily enjoy 45 minutes or even an hour from this very exciting outfit. Clearly when I witnessed their set as part of ‘The Great Escape‘ – which was my third favourite of the whole new music festival – that particular performance was also limited to 30 minutes. But I felt that the previous performance had a little aggression and edge to it as did the performance at Chalk. My colleague also noted this to me after tonight’s set had concluded without us previously discussing it. Maybe the Komedia stage wasn’t sufficiently large or wide enough for frontman Hamish to prowl the stage, although he did come and join us punters.
As before, the band’s format is that Hamish, who holds the mic in an unusual style, runs the show and is very much centre stage and centre of attention as he offloads an enthusiastic barrage of in-yer-face Glaswegian burrs, whilst guitarist (and occasional electronics knob twiddler) Conor Goldie also has his moments and interacts with the crowd. This somewhat reminds me of the interaction between IDLES Joe Talbot and ‘Bobo’ (Mark Bowen), there’s the same chemistry going on here. I just wish that VLURE were as big as IDLES, as they certainly deserve to be! In contrast, Conor’s brother, Niall Goldie is on Fender Jazz bass and so less out there, and Alex Pearson is far too busy to be involved with the crowd due to her time being taken up with backing vocals, two Korg keyboards and another keyboard to the side, and drummer Carlo Kriekaard is stuck behind the kit.
Tonight’s seven song set consisted of a trio of songs from last year’s ‘Euphoria’ EP, those being opener ‘Heartbeat’, which was immediately followed by ‘Show Me How To Live Again’ and euphoric closing number ‘This Is Not The End’ which Hamish dedicated “to Glasgow!”. On the subject of ‘Euphoria’, I noted that at least three of the band had the word tattooed on their bodies, maybe the other two do as well? But it’s a sign of the closeness of this on-the-rise unit. Two other songs were singles, 2021’s gauntlet throwing Numanesque earworm ‘Shattered Faith’ (“I’m nobody’s son, nobody’s son”….) and current 2023 release ‘Cut It’. The remaining two choons to my knowledge are currently unreleased, those being ‘This Fantasy’ and ‘Heaven Sent’.
The quintet were pushing it to the max tonight with their energetic set and none was more evident as when Conor got back on stage from the crowd at the conclusion of final number ‘This Is Not The End’, as he was visibly moved by the whole occasion and was almost sobbing but held it back.
Thus mission accomplished in sharing their industrial dance beats that echo Nitzer Ebb, Prodigy, SCALPING, The Ninth Wave and the KLF all rolled into one…Fabulous stuff! When’s the album coming out guys?
VLURE:
Hamish Hutcheson – vocals
Conor Goldie – guitars, synths
Niall Goldie – bass
Carlo Kriekaard – drums
Alex Pearson – synths, keys
VLURE setlist:
‘Heartbeat’ (from 2022 ‘Euphoria’ EP)
‘Show Me How To Live Again’ (from 2022 ‘Euphoria’ EP)
‘This Fantasy’ (unreleased)
‘Cut It’ (2023 single)
‘Heaven Sent’ (unreleased)
‘Shattered Faith’ (2021 single)
‘This Is Not The End’ (from 2022 ‘Euphoria’ EP)
VLURE music can be found on Bandcamp.
CIEL (pronounced ‘She-Elle’) have certainly come a long way since we caught up with the band’s first ever live performance, which went down at The Prince Albert on 19th December 2018 (Review HERE). Up until that night CIEL had simply been the solo project of Dutch born Michelle Hindriks, who had previously studied in Brighton at BIMM. After which she went back home, but the pull of Brighton proved too great and so Michelle returned in September 2018 and to be honest has never looked back.
The original trio of Michelle’s bandmates from that early period have been replaced with a more solid lineup featuring Jorge Bele Jimenez (from Spain) on guitar and Tim Spencer (from Littlehampton) on drums. They draw influences from the creative baggage of three countries’ scenes – whilst not really feeling like they belong to any of them – CIEL’s music has a nagging yet fresh, dark and sometimes quietly glorious quality to it. Combining their love of fuzzy indie rock, goth and shoegaze, the band’s broody and gritty music is tempered by the soft, icy, but emotive melodies of singer Michelle.
As well as now having headlined their own shows, including The Prince Albert last October (Review HERE), they have supported the likes of Penelope Isles, She Drew The Gun and English Teacher along the way. They have had considerable support from Steve Lamacq at 6 Music and their July 2022 single ‘Baby Don’t You Know’ was A listed on the station. I know radio broadcaster Melita Dennett is also a fan of CIEL as often pops up at the band’s local performances.
October last year saw the trio drop their 5-track ‘Not In The Sun, Nor In The Dark’ EP to much acclaim, with the vinyl version long being sold out. The future’s looking bright for them as they are no doubt looking forward to May when they play ‘The Great Escape‘ new music festival (details HERE) and then head on up to The Lexington to play a headline show in the capital – tickets HERE. From there they will whizz off and play their first ever gig in France, which will happen at the ‘Supersonic Block Party Festival’ on Friday 19th May. September has seen them selected as special guests for 16 of the 25-date European tour from Blood Red Shoes, which will see CIEL play in Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. Clearly 2023 is going to be their year!
Back to tonight and one assumes that Michelle feels at home as she no doubt has shared some backstage banter with fellow countryman Carol Kriekaard from VLURE, prior to taking to the Komedia’s downstairs stage.
CIEL kicked off proceedings at 7:47pm with an 8-tune set, which ran until 8:16pm. Michelle was as usual on vocals and Fender Jazz bass and occasional shakers, Jorge was on Fender Jaguar guitar, and Tim was on drums and in charge of the laptop which had some keyboard backing etc.
Clearly CIEL are now in the process of leaving their old material behind, like my favourite song of theirs ‘The Shore’ (from 2020) and are in the now and are also looking forward. This is evident with their choice of material, that being a trio from latest release ‘Not In The Sun, Nor In The Dark’ EP, as well as a handful of unreleased material. It is also immediately evident after just a minute of playing, as myself and colleagues agreed that CIEL have suddenly gotten harder and heavier. There’s the feeling that the drums are more intense and the guitars sounded louder, whereas Michelle’s vocal does remain the same as before and are possibly not hard enough at the moment for this new sound. Having said that, they went down very well with the crowd and so judging by this response, that this trio are certainly on the right path, but a few tweaks here and there will be required to move on up another level.
CIEL:
Michelle Hindriks – vocals/bass/shakers
Jorge Bele Jimenez – guitar/backing vocals
Tim Spencer – drums/laptop
CIEL setlist:
‘Back To The Feeling’ (from 2022 ‘Not In The Sun, Nor In The Dark’ EP)
‘Seeking’ (from 2022 ‘AA Sessions’ release)
‘Talk’ (unreleased)
‘Awake’ (unreleased)
‘Baby Don’t You Know’ from 2022 ‘Not In The Sun, Nor In The Dark’ EP)
‘Pictures’ (unreleased)
‘Catchy ???’ (working title – unreleased)
‘Fine Everything’ (from 2022 ‘Not In The Sun, Nor In The Dark’ EP)
CIEL music can be found on Bandcamp.
