London Zine of Music, Arts and Miscellaneous Happenings. Monthly updates & seasonal physicals.
/ˈpɪnˌdrɒp/
1) adjective describing the silence produced when a performance leaves the audience speechless (ie: one could hear a pin drop)
2) verb to indicate the location of a particular happening
01
___Caixa Cubo @ 100 Club £16.8 - The Brazilian samba-jazz trio adventure beyond a mere comfortable and infectious funk into a world of slick harmonic virtuosity that lands them performances at the largest jazz festivals across the globe and scholarships to study at the Hague conservatoire. tickets
___Legss @ Old Blue Last £6/10 - As part of the brilliant Omen Festival series, London’s crunching experimental rockers play their first gig since June – watch out for high demand! Not many bands can find the golden mean between dynamic emotive instrumentals and dissonant thumping chrouses, witty sprechgesang and lilting melodies. Support from Bristol’s excellent HAAL. tickets
02
___Shacklewell Arms Halloween Party £12 - Conjuring thunderous, dystopian, raving psychosis, the experimental duo SILVERWINGKILLER yell chants over gabba kicks and schizoid synths. I’m sure if Atari Teenage Riot found their sound in 2020s Manchester this is exactly how they’d sound. Support from Big Warm Bed, Bert Ussher, Flytrap and Special Guests TBC. tickets
03
___Joanne Robertson & xmal @ Candid Arts Trust £17 - Having sold out Candid Arts Trust on the first Sunday of the month, Robertson and xmal will be performing alongside an unannounced guest. Even if you can’t make it to the show, make sure to check out both artists’ recent projects - ‘Backstage Raver’ by Robertson is a joint album with frequent collaborator Dean Blunt. It features haunting, muddy guitars and droning vocals, like a sombre dream. xmal’s ‘Mother Lung’, on the other hand, features clear, earnest singing and guitar tracing strange childish melodies. Both albums make the perfect soundtrack for the coming winter. tickets
04
___deary @ Rough Trade East FREE - Drowning in melancholia (and reverb), the London’s dream pop duo stirs sweetness into their songs of glassy, washing guitars and delicate synths with a voice of an angel (aka Dottie Cockram). Conjuring interesting turns out of their nostalgia-inducing influences. With a Sold Out show at the Lexington on the 20th, expect lines around the block. rsvp
06
___Jessica Pratt @ Barbican Centre £31.88 - With her distinctive elven voice, sweet as honeysuckle, Pratt moves along a trajectory, diving deeper into the brill-building inspiration that weaves warming reverb and 60’s percussion into delicate ballads. In a space like the Barbican Hall, her recent output will translate perfectly: acoustic guitar glancing soft echoes as she whispers soft wisdoms. Good luck getting a ticket! tickets
08
___Far Caspian @ The Lower Third £18.52 - Far Caspian IS Joel Johnston, the Irish born, Leeds based musician. Johnston writes, records and mixes everything himself from the clean instrumentation, and honest whispers to the streamlined arrangement of muted textures - and he’s bringing the full package with him to The Lower Third. He'll be joined by Cork outfit Cardinals who offer brooding leather-clad rock and roll nostalgia, woven together with hypnotising Irish trad folk accordion (and the odd frenetic tambourine cameo). Disinterested in proving themselves as part of a certain style or with a certain audience, as we are so used to in London, the intimacy of their live performances is rare and certainly worth experiencing… tickets
09
___Florence Sinclair @ Troxy £32 - As part of Pitchfork Music Fest, experimental and mysterious rapper Florence Sinclair will be opening for CASISDEAD on the 17th. Their first release having been an ambient album, Sinclair uses heavily chopped samples and mostly acoustic instrumentals to build a soundscape to express their angst. Be sure to come to Troxy early to watch Sinclair bring their intimate and complex worldbuilding to life. tickets
___Pitchfork Music Festival Dalston Takeover £41.6 - Split between some of Dalston’s great venues you will hear the jagged jazz-rock wizardry of Geordie Greep, the great moshing fervour of shame and NYC’s wild, unpredictable and in-high-demand experimental rockers YHWH Nailgun (whose drummer alone will rip your mind apart). If the splits are kind, this will be some bargain. tickets
11
___Pindrop Presents: HAAL @ The Windmill £6 - Pindrop Presents another monthly night at the Windmill (huzzah)! This time we delve into the extensive world of post-rock. Our heavy hitting headliner HAAL bring their brutal, fuzzed out sounds down from Bristol, reminiscent of post-rock progenitors. Their debut EP ‘Back to Shilmarine’ is a masterclass in this, with a remix EP coming soon featuring Ollie Judge of Squid fame amongst others yet to be announced. Support comes from the heart churning symphonies of orchestral rock band Van Zon, the beautiful builds and soaring guitars of the Great Unwashed and the lush soundscapes of ambient duo Faceless Kiss. Definitely not one to miss. tickets
13
___Aga Ujma @ Horse Hospital £12.1 - With a glacial voice, with whispers reminiscent of Björk or múm, the Polish songwriter and multi-instrumentalist blurs her obsessions with gamelan, musicology and harmonic experimentation into hazy lullabies, combining her western musical upbringing with the creativity unlocked by Indonesian and Javanese instruments. tickets
14
___Maruja @ Village Underground £17.85 - Leading the gnarly saxophone revolution, Manchester’s Maruja are bringing their A-game to Village Underground. Angry lyrics balanced on fuzzed out bass and guitar, rapid tight drum grooves and that damn saxophone. Man. Oozing levels of coolness not seen since the Fonz, they erect a mean moshpit and simultaneous unequivocal attentiveness from a crowd. Heads will bang. tickets
15-24
___EFG London Jazz Festival @ Multiple Venues - Another great lineup for this year’s festival, with performances from icons such as Pat Metheny (15-16th), upcoming envelope pushers like Emma Rawicz (16), whose compositions are out of this world, an homage to the great Max Roach and the ever-exciting Orii Community Jam (both 18th) just to name a few. tickets
17
___Evicshen @ Cafe Oto £10/15/17 - Because what’s your month without a little bit of harsh noise. The San-Francisco sound-artist/mad-scientist Evicshen manipulates records with her nails, each bound to turntable styluses, creating impossible sound. Playing both alongside the avant-garde turntable wizardry of Mariam Rezaei and solo, you’re in for a treat. If they’re good enough for our friends ‘Tough Sell’, down in Bristol, we can guarantee that this will melt your brain. tickets
19
___Xiu Xiu @ Heaven £16 - After dropping the absolute headfuck that is ‘13” Frank Beltramo Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips’, Xiu Xiu are gracing us with their presence at the iconic nightclub Heaven. Abrasion and melancholy through industrial electronics and noise rock tied together with unapologetic queerness on club speakers? You’d be a fool to miss this. Expect an extensive setlist of mixed genres that will bring you to tears and destroy your ears simultaneously. Undoubtedly would be the boldest gig to bring a first date to. tickets
___thistle @ The Social £5.2 - Form Presents are at it again with another brilliant lineup this November as part of their residency at the Social. Northampton-based noise-gaze band Thistle bring the lightning-paced heat of all your favourite bands’ favourite bands into one powerful package. Support coming from Flytrap, who blend those new age post-punk sounds we all love with beautiful psych rock melodies, and Brody Milner, an artist who effortlessly swaps between fast paced grooves, indie bangers and quiet sincere melodies. Three band bills don’t get better than this. tickets
22
___Ife Ogunjobi @ 100 Club £PRICE - With a taste enriched by South-East London’s musical diversity, Ife Ogunjobi, ⅕ of the Mercury Award-winning Ezra Collective, welds the most beautiful and groovy compositions out of the language of jazz, hip-hop and RnB. His 2023 EP ‘STAY TRUE’ is fuelled by a passion instilled by his upbringing for Nigerian music, both Afrobeat and Afrobeats alike. Ogunjobi’s strong trumpet playing is immediately evocative of Fela Kuti’s Africa ‘70 band, yet his forward-thinking vision pulls that tradition back into ground-breaking territory. tickets
24
___Transatlantic Trance Map – Evan Parker & Matthew Wright @ Cafe Oto £10/15/17 - Evan Parker, the GOAT of free-improv sax and firm COVID-sceptic (perhaps the avant-garde is not great for logical thinking capabilities), is back at Oto to showcase his latest brainchild with Matthew Wright, the Transatlantic Trance Map: a showcase of (perhaps simultaneous) improvisation from the maddest of both London and New York’s free-jazz scenes. tickets
27
___Kiran Leonard @ Moor Beer Vaults £13 - Touring his new album ‘Real Home’, the ingenious songwriter and bandleader is pushing his flirtation with folk to its limits. Leonard can keel you over with his utterly beautiful singing (bordering on yelps) and the band’s expansive, otherworldly drones. With support from the playful art-pop of Sunglasz Vendor, what are you doing if you haven’t already bought a ticket?? tickets
29
___vegas water taxi @ The Lexington £11.33 - London has had its fair share of bands flirting with the country music sound, each utilising the form as their own free-consciousness canvas. No one, however, has painted with the humour of the Salomon wearing, small plates and orange wine zeitgeist quite like Ben Hambro’s vegas water taxi. Truly the sockshousemeetingsfication of music. With endless farcical couplets and a history of filling stages with as many backing musicians as possible, audiences are in for a treat. tickets
For even more crucial dates that couldn't fit on the list...
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by MMB
After a B2B DJ set by Alosius and Lolina (label leaders of Life Is Beautiful Records and Relaxin Records respectively), No Bra materialises onstage to give a literally stripped-down performance. She stands still on the stage, topless with her long hair covering her chest, lit mainly from the back and delivers her spoken word. Her music mostly consists of self-produced beats with funny and discordant reflections on sex and art scene life. The audience was less familiar with her music, and were a mix of amused and disgusted… Her penultimate song, Munchausen, is a hysterical, shallow smoking-area-conversation-simulacrum in which No Bra voices both characters, with no change in her physicality or sometimes not even a breath to distinguish the two.
NEW YORK expands on these themes of awkward youth, charging them up with a girly, freaky, scrambled energy, at once minimal and deeply intense. The duo’s performance is intimate in a way that demands both attention and respect. NEW YORK performs in the middle of the crowd – so close that the whole crowd holds themselves back – and spends the first 10 minutes of their set crouched down, fiddling with a CDJ. They perform their whole album ‘Rapstar’ from front to back. Experimental or ambient portions of the album are animated through intuitive and unconventional dancing. One song is performed entirely with both artists' arms folded over their faces. This closeness equally demands privacy. Nearly all their features performed their verses live, adding to the immediacy and groundedness.
NEW YORK's lyrics are similar to No Bra. They write very bluntly about relationships – partying, shopping, hatred – all in an unglamorous, humorous but altogether introspective way - “my kicks, my kicks, I have like 56… my boyfriend calls me a hoarder”. The mundane absurdity of their lyrics is heightened by the deadpan delivery and incessant chopped-up repetition. With white-out IDM beats and infectious hooks, ‘Rapstar’ takes NEW YORK to new, glitchier heights. The immediacy of NEW YORK lyrics is reflected in the untheatrical atmosphere of the performance - both are wearing pumps and vague interpretations of office wear, with Gretchen Lawrence in a military hat and Coumba Samba in a shift dress. These outfits are accented by neon tape, forming rings on their fingers, suggestions of new seams. Lawrence wears a deconstructed fleece emblazoned with NY - it is cut and partially reattached at the shoulder, with strings hanging down like sparse epaulettes. The audience’s relationship with the performer and with each other is similarly deconstructed. The neon lights render familiar skin and teeth harshly. The genius of NEW YORK is that they don’t dress up their awkwardness, they’re just dressed up and awkward.
by MR
Having opened for Kiran Leonard back in March, cyberfolk songstress FLOCO returns to the Windmill with her airy vocals and looping violin. This time, however, an additional band member is positioned to the side with a guitar, allowing for a fuller sound than was produced at the Kiran Leonard show. FLOCO herself oversees a wide array of sequencers, synths, and guitar pedals with a quietly assured stage presence that draws a rapt audience in. The pace of the music might be slower than what the stereotypical south London audience might be used to, but the crowd is full of the sort of silent appreciation that indicates an artist has truly earned their respect.
There is a dizzying beauty to the way FLOCO loops her violin and her vocals, producing a sound that feels somehow cosy and transcendent at the same time; the feeling evoked is something analogous to watching a torrential lightning storm but from inside the comfort of your own flat. A particular standout is “About You,” a song which is intimate without being mawkish, a meditation on love and the desire to create for and about someone else. The minimalist pulsating instrumentation brings FLOCO’s shimmering vocals to the foreground, as if emphasising the care put into the writing process itself.
While FLOCO’s palette tends toward the lush and folky, she processes her sound through effects pedals, a result of teenage years spent in punk and drone bands. With the slow ratcheting of a dial, she pitches her voice up and down, singing about how she knows it’s “not easy to love me.” The digitally imposed wavering of her technically gifted voice combines with the slow backing guitar to produce something truly special. With the end of the set, the audience comes back down to earth, but one thing is clear: in a sense we are all loco for FLOCO.
by MLT
In the run-up to their 2025 festival celebrating hip-hop, hardcore, punk, and alternative music, Manchester’s Outbreak Festival presents a showcase of the iconic Boston-based label, Run For Cover, beaming the finest of their midwestern emo bands into London before wandering up north for the weekend. Word on the street is that the renowned slowcore and emo band, Citizen, are to headline playing their seminal 2013 album, ‘Youth’, in full, with support from fellow RFC label mates, Horse Jumper of Love, Enumclaw, and Armlock.
Up on stage Enumclaw, returns to London from Tacoma, Washington, with a fresh release, ‘Home in Another Life’, an album that combines Pacific Northwestern alternative and emo. Lead singer Aramis’ voice is full of yearning and romance, as his serenade blended with anthemic grunge riffs. The great bond of friendship animates the narrative of suburban life, longing, and youth - a recurring lyrical theme of the evening. It seemed hard for Enumclaw to get the crowd of eagerly awaiting Citizen fans jumping. “I love music, I’m sorry” bassist Eli Edwards confesses to the audience, proceeding to throw himself into the crowd to wrap up the set.
Next, the Bostonian Horse Jumper of Love assumed position, to a noticeably cramped audience. Taking a break from up-tempo guitars, HJoL put the slow in slowcore. Lead singer, Dimitri Giannopoulos boasts a warm round voice enticing you into their witty and emotional lyricism, “Hate’s the noise of sorrow /I read it in the Amazon Basics Bible”. Their sludgy instrumentals mix nicely with Giannopoulos’s soft, warm vocals. Playing tracks off their August release, “Disaster Trick”, HJoL slam between slacker introspection and breakdowns of loud, raring guitars and smashing drums. Giannopoulos praises the excited audience, who by this time seem prepared for the upcoming Citizen. It was a humble set that gave all a moment to catch their breath, allowing necks to rest from bursts of head banging.
As fans stumble back from the smoking area into the venue, Citizen waltz on stage to Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You’, greeting their loyal fans, immediately tearing into the opening of the album, “Roam The Room”. The crowd is insanely receptive, the pit packed with fans singing their lungs out: the moshers dream karaoke. The energy hasn’t even reached its peak yet, but heads fly back and forth accompanied by loyal cheering and anticipation for the rest of Youth to be played. As crowd members groan in fondness at the top of each song, the emotional attachment to ‘Youth’ becomes apparent. The track “Sleep” rips, as the singer begs that “I’m getting sick and tired of the smile that I fake every day”. Citizen thank their label for taking a chance on them back in the day when they were younger, before plowing through the rest of their set. The way audience members sing alongside Citizen reveals the extent to which the album encapsulates a time of pure yearning and anguish. Strangers, brought together by their love for an album, screaming in unison. Citizen do not fail at hyping this excited audience, as topless moshers are running from the back of the venue, trying to squish their way back to the barrier. Showcasing the past, present, and future of American emotional music, it is clear that Run For Cover Records will be intrinsic to the scene whose influence reaches far beyond the US.
DR
___Braniac's Daughter by The Dukes of Stratophear (1987, UK)
___Sally Go Round The Roses by The Jaynetts (1963, US)
GKA
___SICK by BUFFEE (2021, UK)
___tenebrist by julie (2024, US)
MLT
___What a Waste by Ian Dury & The Blockheads (1987, UK)
___This World by Lunchbox (2024, US)
MMB
___The Lamb Ran Away with the Crown by Judee Sill (1971, US)
___I'm Happy But You Don't Like Me by Asobi Seksu (2004, US)
MR
___What I Like by Charli XCX (2013, UK)
___Theme From New York, New York by Frank Sinatra (1977, US)
SE
___So Medieval by Blue Bendy (2024, UK)
___Pinch by CAN (1972, Germany)
Pindrop is DR, GKA, MLT, MMB, MR, & SE
Contact us at @pindropzine (instagram) and pindropzine@gmail.com (email)