Ry Guy

Koko

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

At KOKO, Ry Guy Teases Something Brilliant Beneath The Noise

London’s permanently under construction now. Streets kink off into dead ends, stations disappear behind scaffolding overnight, and every route south of Camden feels like it’s been designed by an especially vindictive SimCity player. Even cycling to KOKO — a journey usually etched into muscle memory — turns into a stop-start crawl through diversions and exhaust fumes. Dice says one thing, KOKO says another, and before you’ve even locked the bike up, there’s already the creeping suspicion you’ve missed something important.

Then suddenly: clear roads past St Pancras, parking directly outside, and an eerily empty queue.

Not ideal.

At the guestlist entrance, two hopefuls are swerved while another frantically digs through emails trying to prove they “know someone”. Eventually we’re waved through with a smile and emerge at the top of the stairs just as Ry Guy is introducing himself over a haze of warm stage lights and half-audible chatter.

The West London artist cuts a striking figure centre-stage: oversized cream tailoring, dark sunglasses, Höfner bass slung low like a lost artefact from a forgotten psych-soul movement. Behind him, the band stretch across the stage in a neat horizontal line — part indie jam collective, part art-school house band.

On record, Ry Guy’s music feels gorgeously waterlogged: psychedelic soul soaked in dub, art-pop and lo-fi funk, with echoes of TV On The Radio, Khruangbin and early Blood Orange flickering beneath the surface. Recent single ‘Push Me In The Water/Dirty Like A River’, in particular, is all murky low-end, elastic grooves and vocals that drift in and out of focus like pirate radio signals after midnight. Tonight though, much of that subtlety gets swallowed whole by the room.

Even standing near the sound desk, the mix comes through blurred and strangely flat — bass frequencies ballooning into mush while guitars and vocal textures dissolve into the ether. Songs arrive one after another with almost mechanical efficiency, little space left for momentum or release. Ry himself remains coolly detached throughout, relaxed to the point of near weightlessness, while the band lock into grooves that feel technically tight but emotionally restrained.

There are flashes where the whole thing suddenly threatens to ignite.

‘Push Me In The Water’ appears midway through the set, though in this form it’s barely recognisable — its humid groove scrubbed clean by the acoustics. But then ‘Change Is Gonna Come’ lands and, finally, everything clicks into focus. Suddenly the haze works in the music’s favour. Ry’s voice takes on a bruised, yearning quality somewhere between Robert Smith melancholy and soul-searching late-night psychedelia, while the band drift behind him in slow-motion waves. For a few minutes, the room genuinely lifts.

Closer ‘My Own Brother’ pushes furthest into chaos: tense, noisy and gloriously unsteady, with the band finally sounding like they’re willing to let the songs rupture at the seams rather than politely preserve them.

The frustrating thing about Ry Guy live isn’t a lack of ideas — it’s the opposite. The bones of something brilliant are all there: the aesthetic, the songwriting, the strange genre collisions, the sense of someone building their own musical universe slightly outside the current UK indie template. Right now though, the live show still feels caught between rehearsal room looseness and genuine transcendence.

But if he can eventually get the stage show to hit with the same clarity and depth as the records, Ry Guy won’t stay a cult name for very long.

Luvcat

KOKO

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Stray-Cats & Scarlet Curtains: Luvcat’s Cure-Inflected Coronation at Koko

If you were on the socials in the latter part of October, you were guaranteed to see an uptick in horror memes, selfies with pumpkin-spice lattes; and Sophie Morgan Howarth a.k.a. Luvcat. Luvcat, seemed to erupt out of nowhere: a Sally-from-The Nightmare Before Christmas meets Amy Winehouse chimera suddenly colonising feeds across central London. And judging by the cavalcade now snaking down Camden High Street, it appears the rest of the city got the memo too.

We find ourselves at the tail end of that line outside KOKO, the word on the street being that it’s been growing unchecked since the morning. An eclectic flock chatters in high spirits, while my +1 frets about needing more makeup; “I need to put on more makeup,” he mutters, making his way towards the loo like he's auditioning for his own gothic cabaret. Rather than stress about the VIP queue we’ve been politely escorted out of, we detour instead into the pub, opting for the sloped path leading to seating which offers us a vantage point to keep an eye on the procession for movement and one elbow firmly on the bar.

When we re-emerge, a bit left of centre, the endless human serpent is nearly through the door. In our path, two loiterers casually necking Pinot Gris straight from the bottle block our path; classic Camden. Naturally we stall, chat, the bottle finds its way into our hands too, and suddenly that bottle morphs into lukewarm Sainsbos tins of gin and vodka. Oh my!. As long-time fans of Luvcat’s arc; from Paper Dress Vintage to MOTH to this sold-out KOKO climax, we ask what the fuss’s about. “She’s larger than life,” one says. “Like The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus but with heartbreak.” “It’s confessional. Swirling. Madness”, adds the other. We squint, trying to absorb it all, then realise we’ve missed the opener. We shove through the crowd, fighting for even a sliver of sightline towards the stage. KOKO is rammed.

Inside, the venue has been transformed into Luvcat’s crooked cabaret. A battered upright piano sits stage-left, draped in pearls and velvet gloom, crowned with a single green bottle glinting under the lights. Beside it stands Jack Fussey, casting sly glances between the pinstripes of his suit. Alongside him are Andy Richmond, Tom Fripp, and Will Jaquet; the four collaborators maintaining Luvcat’s orbit.

Sophie emerges, now Luvcat and drifts into view like a phantom with rehearsal scars; half-moon blonde hair, raven undercurrent, a tiny bow perched just so. The roar that greets her rattles the discoball. She begins at the piano, fingers trembling with theatre-born intent, opening with ‘Lipstick’, the crowd hanging on each phrase as though it were encoded with secrets.

Then the band shifts gears. Fussey’s chord rings out, jagged and heavy, and the stomping anthem ‘Matador’ hits like a firecracker in a tin can. The floor surges. People don’t just sing, they surrender. Shortly after, she returns to the piano for ‘Alien’, a dark confession of cosmic loneliness and horizontal heartbreak, the green bottle again catching the light like a silent witness.

Suddenly the theatre morphs. The drummer (whose kit lurks under the magenta haze) locks into a marching-snare rhythm; the band dons embellished jackets as though they’ve just walked off a stage set in 1920s Berlin. With a flourish she brandishes an accordion and launches into ‘Dinner @ Brasserie Zédel’, turning the room into a cabaret madhouse. Richmond and Fripp trade rhythmic punches; Jaquet perched on a high stool, keeping the chaos grounded.

Then comes the penultimate song: ‘Love & Money’. A slow build. Sophie grips the mic with both hands, voice low, tension taut. The crowd hushes. Then she unleashes a belt so raw it scrapes the air. Screams, tears, phones rising vertically like lighters, the moment fractures time. People clutch one another. We hold our breath. The stage is both altar and battlefield.

Finally, ‘He’s My Man’ closes the set; full circus, full heartbreak, full Luvcat. The band takes their bow, the curtain of red behind them soaking up the applause like velvet bruises. They toast. They linger. They leave us wanting more.

Stepping back into Camden, the city is different: glitter on collars, strangers arguing their favourite song, makeup smeared in cathartic victories. This wasn’t a “rising star” set, this was the moment after. KOKO didn’t just host a show, it witnessed a coronation. Luvcat didn’t just perform, she wove us together into her universe. We couldn’t help thinking this wouldn’t be the last we’d hear of this charming performer because in the words of the good Doctor Parnassus “You can’t stop a story being told.”