Idles Block Party

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Noise Complaints Be Damned! Idles 2-Day Block Party hits Bristol like a 1-2 punch combo.

Rolling up late to the Idles Block Party feels like barging into a Cirque Bizarre that you must’ve forgotten you were a part of. Thirty minutes behind schedule thanks to London traffic, we arrive just in time to catch a close-cropped, peroxide, local human; touting and gesticulating wildly while costume jewellery, in such abundance Biz Markie’d blush, swung with force as they were being ejected from the barricaded buffer zone around Queen Square, screaming: “These fucking wankers, all I ever wanted to do was dance!”; a fitting overture for Bristol’s biggest letter to the editor on noise and defiance this summer. This being Idles’ only UK show of the year, the microfestival energy was electric. But Clifton locals looked less than thrilled to see their square turned into a fenced off fortress of beer queues, barrier mazes and relentless bass thuds.

Elbows out ya’ll, because space was the first fight of the night. The footprint felt too small for the sold-out crowd; a constant game of human chicken between queuers and punters dodging the crowd swirl. Good vantage points meant risking being trampled or relying on the giant stage screens. Thank God for those screens; they rescued many who felt stranded behind the press of bodies. At least the weather stayed kind: sunshine and warmth helped keep the mood buoyant.

Lambrini Girls, fronted by Phoebe Lunny whose red stained mouth and chin looked like they’d torn through a small child, cracked the first knuckles of the night, serving up their snarling anti-T*RF sentiment like big sisters dragging the world’s worst uncle out by the ear. They riffed sharply on trans rights, unapologetically and their set closer, ‘Cuntology 101’, had the crowd spelling out every letter like a primal banging of the drums. In every raw chord and lyric, they offered sanctuary to marginalised voices; holding space like protective siblings in a hostile world.

Soft Play (formerly Slaves) followed with a smoggy, gritty set. They opened with ‘All Things’, followed by ‘Fuck the Hi-Hat', ‘Girl Fight’ (played twice by request) and ‘Sockets’, mixing sloganeering with smog-punk energy. Isaac and Laurie leaned in heavily to one way audience chatter, of which they spared no opportunity to take digs at their fans. Wandering into the pit aimlessly mid-song, alerting fans to the rogue mic cable mid-performance; one could argue their time on stage could’ve been spent more effectively. Being blown away by their Ally Pally performance a few years back, this set in contrast left something to be desired. When ‘Fuck the Hi-Hat' (eventually) hit, the only thing that got more of a crowd reaction was when the duo kept shouting “Bristol!”, as though they’d collectively suffered amnesia after every song played. It was chaotic, ragged, and utterly bizzare.

But make no mistake; this was always Idles’ night. As dusk settled, opening bass hits from ‘Colossus’ pulled the audience forward like gravity. Their setlist: ‘Colossus’, ‘Gift Horse’, ‘Mr. Motivator’, ‘Mother’, ‘Car Crash’, ‘I’m Scum’, ‘Well Done’, ‘The Wheel’, weaved defiance with emotion, climaxing in a sonic wave that lifted everyone. Those live renditions ran a slower burn than the studio ‘Colossus’, drawing tension until it exploded into motion. By the chorus, the pit had swelled to a breathing organism pulsing with bass.
 
The sound was immaculate; each instrument sharply defined, every vocal delivered with clarity, and backing harmonies piercing through the roar. Even ringed by barriers, bolstered by screens, the show felt communal, even intimate, like a drenched, screaming embrace.

Joe Talbot’s crowd patter between songs is part confessional, part group therapy. He talks openly about psychotic breaks, mental health struggles, arrests, moving back to Bristol, saving small venues. He doesn’t just sing for the people, he speaks with them, a big brother figure wielding a megaphone instead of a soapbox. Then comes the political gut punch: giant screens flashing a QR code to donate to MAP, a charity helping Palestinians access medical aid. Hundreds of phones rise in the dark, glowing like a constellation of solidarity. It's a rare moment where a gig feels like more than just noise; it feels like action.

The sound throughout is blisteringly good: every instrument distinct, every lyric sharp enough to draw blood. Even with the congestion, even with the disconnect of being forced to watch half the show on a screen, the set feels intimate, communal, a massive, sweaty group hug disguised as a punk gig. Fans in Idles merch hug strangers, strangers scream lyrics back at the band, and for ninety minutes Bristol feels like a place where anger, love and hope all get equal billing. By the end, as the last lights fade and the crowd spills reluctantly back into the city, one thing’s clear: the Idles Block Party doesn’t just give you a night out. It gives you a voice, a cause, and a sore throat to prove it. If this is the only show they give us this year, it’s enough to hold us over—but only just.

Eterna

Club Cheek

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Baptised in Feedback, Crowned in Fog

This one goes out to the accommodating Kester at Club Cheek; the quietly benevolent doorman who let us duck past the velvet rope and into the pulsing furnace of Eterna’s sold-out July set. Without that favour, we’d have been stuck outside, ears pressed to brick.

The night was sweltering. One of those scorched evenings where the pavement sizzles and every underground stop feels like a war crime. We half-considered swimming the Thames just to cool off. But south of the river, Club Cheek; a fresh, labyrinthine venue tucked under Brixton's railway arches, offered shelter and sound. Think Scala with a lower ceiling and a better soul. There’s viewing from every angle, beams overhead for hanging lights or people (depending on the gig), and a strobed-out, giddy laser show that looked like someone let Aphex Twin into the lighting booth.

At first, it was a handful of us rattling around the place. Then, like a fever dream, it filled. Fast. “I think they’re mainly friends,” Will, an artist/poet, tells us between bands. He’d clocked my book (Les Paul’s autobiography, alright, mate?) and leaned in conspiratorially. But if this was just mates of the band, they must’ve all skipped work, dumped dates, and left boiling curry on the stove to get here. That’s commitment. Try getting a Londoner to reply to a group chat, let alone turn up en masse.

And what a crowd it was. Not a single mobile screen lit up. No shouty pints-over-the-music merchants. Just pure attention. During the breaks between bands, strangers chatted, introduced themselves, asked what brought you here; like a past life version of the scene had been summoned up for one night only. Maybe it’s a south-of-the-river thing. Whatever it was, it worked.

Then came Eterna.

Fresh off their debut LP Debunker via the ever-ascendant Section1 label, the band emerged in silhouette. Their frontman hunched over a cabinet of speakers where his keyboard was balanced like a tray of drinks on a wobbling tray table. The moment they started playing, the air changed. Smells of sweat, smoke and spilled lager mixed with the deep thrum of synths and guitar. People started to push forward, yelling “LOUDER” as if it were a request and not a warning. Like sardines, both live and tinned.

Eterna draw comparisons to the more devotional end of shoegaze; think Slowdive’s early heartbreak colliding with the shadowy electronics of Seefeel. But they’re not interested in nostalgia. They take their time, slow-cooking every build-up until it simmers under your skin. No bravado. No posturing. Just the steady work of a band who trust the atmosphere to speak for itself.

A personal highlight? That moment in the opener where each instrument, each in its own alternate tuning, somehow met in the same key. A shimmering, accidental unity. A sonic car crash that healed itself mid-collision. It was either divine intervention or finely tuned chaos. Either way, it landed like thunder.

They played late. And nobody cared. Club Cheek, cradled under Brixton’s railways, didn’t need to worry about noise complaints; the trains overhead drowned out even the loudest cymbal crashes. But that didn’t stop the band from trying to outdo them. They very nearly did.

Eterna didn’t just fill a venue. They transformed it. For one night, the usual fatigue and cynicism of London’s live scene evaporated. In its place: a sweaty, hypnotised room, moving as one. If this is what the post-Debunker era looks like for Eterna, the rest of us better catch up. Fast.

The Sick Man of Europe

The George Tavern

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

We were told to see the light. Nobody mentioned the strobe lights and migraines. Yes, it’d be a night of unexpected horrors and delights inside The George, drenched in retinal red, The Sick Man of Europe (a man the spitting image of Buffalo Bill) took to the stage not like a band but like a warning. A man in sleeveless black, howling into the void, backed by players who looked more like revenants than musicians. The lights flared like police raids. The air hung thick and sour from the ghost of the warm-up acts, sweat pooling before the first bass note landed.

What followed wasn’t a set so much as a not so ubiquitous initiation into a cult. This wasn’t the usual charming DIY fare the George offers up; there were no winks, no whimsical solos, no clever banter between songs. This was darkwave initiation. Cold, exact, and weirdly religious. It felt like being buried under dry ice (cold but burning) and waking up fluent in post-industrial dread (making ends meet in London).

The recorded material hadn’t prepared us for this. At home, TSMOE can come across like a monologue muttered through a vent; minimalist, maybe even too studied. But live, it hit like revelation. The guitars weren’t just strummed; they slashed and came at us. Drums, even when programmed, punched like they’d been sharpened beforehand. The vocals were there, in the room with you, moving air. No distance. No polish.

They played ‘Obsolete’ early, or maybe it just felt early, time was already melting, and it landed hard; a hymn to everything we discard in ourselves and each other. “At what point do we become obsolete?” asked the track. Fair question. By that point, my shirt was sticking to my spine and the couple next to me had stopped trying to talk over the music and simply stared, rapt.

The songs blurred, not due to sameness, but because of momentum. You could feel it in your gut: the set was speeding up. Each track felt faster, leaner, more aggressive than the last. Whether that was by design or delirium didn’t matter.

By the time they hit ‘Sanguine’, the supposed centrepiece of the record, we were all in it together; drenched, blinking, locked in. On record, it’s almost clinical in its restraint. Here, it hurt. The kind of song that drags you through the mirror, tells you you're already someone else, and leaves you to deal with the consequences.

There was no encore. Nobody needed one. Not for lack of want but because anything more would’ve broken the spell. The heat, the pace, the sheer intensity of it… mercy looked like the better ending. Two gigs in a night, one city across; it was enough.

And here’s the thing: we almost didn’t stick around. We talked about ducking out after the openers, grabbing a drink somewhere with airflow. But we stayed. And The Sick Man of Europe reminded us why you stay. Why you sweat. Why you let your eardrums take the punishment.

Because it’s the ones you don’t expect that get under your skin. That re-write the music you thought you already knew. That make you listen to the album again the next day; not for the first time, but like it is.

Later Youth

Rough Trade

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Wurlitzer and wilted carnations

There’s losing your objectivity, and then there’s clocking a pristine 1967/68 Wurlitzer electric piano on stage before the first chord’s even been struck. One glimpse of that glistening artefact and any critical distance we’d planned to maintain was quickly thrown under the tour van. Later Youth, the musical alter ego of Jo Dudderidge (pronounced like “poetry,” if poetry came from Manchester and loved The Beatles), knows exactly how to disarm a room and this in-store at Rough Trade, Denmark Street was less a gig, more a séance in sunshine.

Before a single note, Jo laid a wreath of funeral flowers spelling out “Later Youth” in front of the Wurlitzer, the blossoms visibly wilting in the sticky London heat. Death’s always been a minor character in Dudderidge’s world; present, yes, but usually with a pint and a piano and, in case that wasn’t poignant enough, a small child with no known comprehension of mortality gave unsolicited stage design advice. There’s a darkly comic metaphor buried in that, but we’re not clever enough to dig it out.

Then came the call to arms or, more accurately, a warm wave of reverb-drenched delay that summoned the growing crowd closer. The set opened with ‘Apple of My Eye’, a track so chirpy and sinister it could only have come from a man smiling while singing, “as you punch me to my death with your hands around my neck.” It was a bouncing, piano-led lurch into baroque pop noir, a maraca shaking somewhere in the mix like an eerie carnival held inside a teacup.

Track two saw Jo giving heartfelt thanks to the room. A moment ago, we were one of three ghosts rattling around the shop, but now the space was fully alive and very much sweating.

By track three, the full Later Youth sonic identity began to unfurl: soft towel-muted snares, a soapbox kick drum, upright basslines that walked rather than ran. It all felt faintly like a late-night lounge act at the back of a dusty ole pub in a parallel 1972; refined, yes, but still willing to get a bit weird round the edges.

Track four gave us pure Beatles energy; Jo yelling into the mic channeled a young Lennon. It was the most Fab Four the set got, and it wore the influence proudly: plucky chord work, creamy harmonies, and that slight sense of knowing it’s all a bit ridiculous, really.

Then came “Lurker”; perhaps the most telling moment of the set. “These songs sound better with a band,” Jo admitted, and while that might be true on record, live there was something charmingly exposed about it all. He swapped spots with backing vocalist Hannah Nicholson for this one, trading piano for acoustic guitar. The two voices, brushed together like old photographs, made the song feel both intimate and distant, befitting a track named after someone who prefers to linger in the background.

‘Hotel Venezuela’ followed, all Wes Anderson melancholy and Kinks-ian charm; that plucky rhythm guitar and organ interplay calling to mind lost summer holidays and sepia-soaked postcards never sent.

By the penultimate track, Dudderidge introduced something “never played in this configuration before.” It was ghostly, sepia-toned again, like being in the back room of an old Western saloon where the piano plays itself and someone whispers, “what’s happened to your eyes?” Whether that was the lyric or our overheated imagination is hard to say.

The final takeaway? Later Youth isn’t just one man and a piano; it’s a whole attic of sounds, half-remembered influences, and beautiful imperfections. Much of the studio polish was left behind for this set, revealing a different angle to Dudderidge’s songwriting: looser, rawer, but no less intricate. It was less fine dining, more rural cooking, and like any great homemade meal, it stuck to the ribs.