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
___GB @ Vespers £16.05 Bird on the Wire - Prepare for a night of blissful, vaporous goodness from Denmark’s GB, a.k.a. Gustav Berntsen. Formerly of fuck-you art-punkers Pardans, his solo endeavours have lit upon a more graceful musical outlook, plummeting through cloudy mires of bizarro soft-rock like a silhouette-spun Connan Mockasin. Just as unmissable is opener Organ Tapes’ ambient R&B perfumery. A luminary of the hypnagogic underground for over a decade, his autotuned dreamweavers remain intricately somnambulant. tickets
___Nashpaints @ Avalon Cafe £13.91 FORM - Shoegaze has become somewhat of a dirty word. With a suffix tagged onto just about anything, the life-altering genre’s waters have been muddied by decades of half-arsed attempts. This is precisely why the daring work of Dubin (because where else?) solo artist Nashpaints is so necessary. It’s clear he has a real understanding of shoegaze’s psychedelic manifesto, conjuring something blissful yet with intricately designed density, rather than merely sounding ‘big’. tickets
02
___Knee Jerk Presents: "The Elvis Off” George Tavern £7 - Woahhh Mama! Be sure to expect an increased rate of twisting and jiving at the George Tavern as “The Elvis Off” runs rampant. Look-alike contests have seen their prime, but with an Elvis-impression contest, Knee Jerk takes to the scene with a bunch of hound dogs to shake things up. £200 is on offer to the winning Elvis, so the stakes are high. Confirmed fans of the King, bands Vehicle and Midding, break up the night to offer respite from getting all shook up. tickets
03
___Pisse @ Shacklewell Arms £17 Bad Vibrations - Egg-punk with theremins: you’ve got to be taking the Pisse! Well whilst these Saxon Könsrockers’ lyrics are filthily funny, often scatalogical, diatribes, their hard-boiled punk chops are no laughing matter – even in spite of a brush with TikTok virality in 2021. Support comes from Güner Künier, no doubt selected for her riot grrrl individualism and similar infatuation with grimy minimal wave synth patches. tickets
___Potato @ Morocco Bound Bermondsey £12 - Morocco bound will see a sincerity matched by the likes of Bill Callahan. The gentle jazz-folk instrumentals of potato churning under a contemplative vocal provides the listener with a warmth to help with the changing of the seasons. Shaker enthusiasts welcome! tickets
07
___Pindrop Presents: The Great Unwashed @ Windmill Brixton £6 - Pindrop are very excited to be showcasing four stellar acts for your auditory pleasure, all drenched in reverb. We have the haunting The Great Unwashed headlining, with support from the fuzzed-out Rotting, electro-post rock of Echo Vision and the stripped-back Eistir. tickets
10
___Jespfur @ The Greyhound FREE 10k global - The Dutch multi-instrumentalist makes his way to the Peckham basement to celebrate the release of his record Iftangible,. Firmly art-pop, his music centres around the manipulation of cavernous guitars. While adorned with swells and warbling tape-machine pitch bends, his restrained voice, quiet arpeggios and dulled drums maintain momentum. tickets
___Natalia Beylis & Eimear Reidy @ Old Church Stoke Newington £20 Baba Yaga's Hut - For those unwoven threads within you, let Natalia Beylis and Eimear Reidy knot them back up with their slow and atmospheric organ/cello conversations. A groaning experimental reincarnation of traditional Irish folk as spiritual as the Old Church, they will brush the dusty cobwebs from your ceilings. NTS resident Kit Grill supports infusing ambient electronica with emotional storytelling: it will be a night of meditation. tickets
14
___Shoko Yoshida @ Folklore Hoxton £13.5 - Step into the psychedelic dreamscape of Shoko Yoshida, Mary Sea, and A Ghost Column. Shoko Yoshida is the London-based Tokyoite bassist and vocalist for the psych doom band Kuunatic but also the jazz-punk band Findom. As a soloist she delivers folktronic assemblages. Hailing from LA, support act Mary Sea’s sound is an underground dream pop act whose music feels like a pleasant trip with some old friends, minus the comedown. Surrender yourself to opener's A Ghost Column’s deliciously textured avant pop: think Beach House on sertraline. tickets
___Vision Fortune @ Shacklewell Arms FREE Baba Yaga's Hut - Even the most ardent motorik militant must concede that there’s far more to kosmische than Dinger’s fill-shy beats. Enter Vision Fortune, who have seized krautrock’s paleolithic drone but done away with the tried-and-true rhythmic backing. In the process, they have rediscovered much of the lysergic freeform magic oft-shunned when thumbing through any ‘70s Germanic connoisseur’s collection. Support band Abigail Snail grasp the improv baton too, lead mangler Stef Kett daring his guitar into places it wanted to go to, but was too afraid to ask. tickets
15
___Camille Camille @ The Lower Third (Up) £13.47 Eat Your Own Ears - Folk from first principles. Beautifully fragile, and very slightly haunting, the wandering strings and sailing woodwinds of Belgium’s Camille could be mistaken for Linda Perhacs. Less is certainly more when it is performed so carefully (and sometimes in French). tickets
___300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks @ Club Cheek £11.36 - The weird and wonderful lovechild of bassline and screamo resulting from the combined efforts of Leamington Spa and West Ham is as confusing (and intriguing) as it is sounds. Sick with early 2010s nostalgia, the pair have cultivated the polarising album of the moment that has the backing of XL Recordings. tickets
23
___Clout Farm @ ORMSIDE Projects £19.99 / 22.5 - A night of Franco-American import, with the wild squelching bagpipe-inflected hyperpop of Paris’ Jazz Lambaux, the buzzing, detuned electro rock of New York’s $quib, and the swirling atmospheric hush of Marseille’s userband & many more!! tickets
24
___In the Round: Broadside Hacks Takeover @ ICA £22.50 - Broadsick Hacks bring together their royal flush of musicians for a two month tour of the country. They take over the ICA with a 4 band lineup that all channel an overarching appreciation, yet progression from trad-folk. Myer U Clark strays the furthest from this, integrating electronic beats with harmoniums for his live performances. Whilst Spitzer Space Telescope embraces influence from sacred harp singing, shanties and Appalachian folk songs. Brown Wimpenny also cultivate an expansive performance achieving a beautiful complexity whilst trying to all fit on the stage. tickets
27
___Nina Winder-Lind & heka (co-headline) @ Shacklewell Arms £14.18 Bird on the Wire - With a song title tipping its hat to Lou Reed and in possession of a forceful sprechgesang à la Patti Smith, Nina Winder-Lind drags ‘70s punk counterculture to the doorstep of the present day. The more personal, feminist visions of her solo debut Wild Love stagger atop a round of moonshine-slicked outsider folk, for which the Shack offers a comfortable home. Heka traces parallel singer-songwriter unravelings, weaving her vocals back together in towering harmonies that would make a Benedictine monk proud. tickets
29 (Try to make your mind up!)
___Ugly @ Islington Assembly Hall £20.86 Bad Vibrations - We all know them, we all love them, our beautiful Ugly. A sweet choral, 6-piece family with complex instrumentation, delicious harmonies and bizarre lyricism (choir kids have always been cool). They turn venues into anemones letting audiences float together in colourful unison - if you don’t like life-changing music, don’t bother going (new album pending!). tickets
___Formal Sppeedwear @ MOTH Club £14.73 JOY - If you’ve ever wondered what it would sound like if David Byrne was born and raised in Stoke, it’s here. These new wave newcomers are becoming quite the 80s-inspired hot topic following their recent debut album release. The three-piece boast glistening guitars over punchy synths and an idiosyncratic vocal that even your parents could get behind. tickets
___Catbandcat @ Windmill Brixton £8 - A greatbandgreat…like if Belle and Sebastian got caught inside the circuits of a computer, catbandcat waver between the sentimentalities of twee/indie pop and Jockstrap weirdness, reflective of their Mancunian roots (a city at once warm-hearted and industrial). Enviable vocals and instrumentation. For those who believe violins are overdone at the Windmill, you may like what this band is doing with theirs. tickets
___Shaking Hand @ Club Cheek £13.2 JOY - Screwface dissonant, infectiously rhythmic, and catchingly melodic, Shaking Hand do it all. Doing as much as one guitar, one bass and drums can do, their intricate interplay reaches places no instrument could reach alone. (Read our live review of them in our June ‘26 bulletin for further persuasion!) tickets
___Body Horror @ The Lexington £14 Snap Crackle & Pop - Paeaning bedwetters and gimp’s gimps, Body Horror aren’t afraid to take the OTT credo of EBM and run with it. Shooting up goth-club bass and guitar to try and shed some of the Reznorisms™ that have done their time, you will be tasting sweat and metal in short order. Also on the bill: Kuntessa’s tongue-cemented-in-cheek electro-hop, bolstered by a full band; and darkwave divas Scam, who promise to make you see, feel, touch and die – hopefully in that order. tickets
Every inch of the Royal Albert Hall begs for attention. Walls adorned with carvings tower over seats covered with red velvet. Large acoustic saucers hang from the ceiling to dampen the echo created by the original dome design. The BBC Proms bring with them cameras and microphones that hang from every angle. Though tonight the venue may have to forgo its pride and act simply as a background to an artist that rivals its spectacle. As Weyes Blood, the cinematic, church-like project honed over 20 years by songwriter Natalie Mering, plays her first concert since June 2025. She is accompanied by the Jules Buckley Orchestra, who walk on stage, sitting to wield their instruments that span centuries. Each person in the orchestra holds their instrument, confident of their cues like sports cars ready at a start line. A cheer from the pit erupts, which forces its way through the stalls and reaches its way up to the gallery. Jules Buckley and Weyes Blood stride onto the stage with an assuredness that radiates from them both.
Through silence, the first notes of “A Lot’s Gonna Change” drift off a swarm of violinists. The song, commencing her 4th album Titanic Rising, encapsulates the transition her music has taken through her last two albums. It signifies her metamorphosis as an artist, solidifying herself as a great. Each violin bow moves in unison as dramatics swell through the string section. Then, they drop off. The blank slate leaves space for Mering’s vocals to peek through for the first time. Her voice is timid to begin with; it doesn’t quite fill the room and feels hesitant. As the song picks up and drums enter, the beat runs away from her. The song is tidal and string-heavy. It swells and retracts, controlled expertly by each musician. Flutes float and fall like leaves over the sound of a reliable synth beat. The music fades to a seamless finish, leaving the crowd hesitant to clap in hopes there could be more. The second song, “Children of the Empire”, hears tubular bells ring through the hall, elevating Mering’s vocals whilst complementing the rest of the orchestra perfectly. The mallet-like tool hits on each tube with a gentleness that contradicts its appearance. Each ‘ding’ echoes like a wedding bell. It reminds the listener of the romantic outlook that she has on life despite her overtly melancholic musings; the two exist across the composition in unison. The composition cinematically rises as each instrument dances around. The back-up singers sing like a church choir as the rest of the orchestra is anticipatory, outlining the possibility of a happy ending before the music mellows with the plucking of a harp. Following with “God Turn Me Into a Flower”, Mering’s voice has now nestled itself comfortably into the night’s proceedings. As she sings ‘You shatter easily and can't pick up all the shards’, her voice wails, expertly controlled without losing the intensity of raw emotion.
Next on the setlist, “Everything”, is prefaced by a cheery Mering. By this point, the crowd have no doubt shed a tear, but solace is offered with what she remarks as….‘a very upbeat song’. Mering finds the comfort of the piano as she encourages the crowd to ‘break the rules of proms’ by dancing or moshing. She embraces irony as a facade to evade the devastating lyrics she is yet to sing. The piano is weighty, instantly finding its way to the gut. Weyes Blood plays solo for a fleeting second, until her solitude is quickly combatted. As she reaches the lyrics, 'True love is making a comeback’, her piano has been forced into a more optimistic tone. Dissonant chords scatter the song throughout as she laments, ‘only half of us, the rest just feel bad’. The song's climax finds the entire orchestra belting. Violins in a frenzy back the song as a trio of backing singers fall into the trance of ‘bah-bah-bah-bah’ as if Mering has found her full control of the orchestra.
For a final song, Mering re-enters the stage joking, ‘was there maybe one we forgot to play?’ A song easily noticed missing, “Movies”, is screamed from the crowd. An integral song to understanding the mind of Weyes Blood. It's a wander around her thoughts as she offers up her own vulnerabilities and desires in pursuit of confidence. As if the crowd knew, synth begins to bubble up the first notes of “Movies”, swallowing the room in a tide of whitewater. The synthesiser’s presence in Weyes Blood’s discography is undeniably integral but tends to take a supporting role when faced with an entire orchestra. Being created over 200 years after the Royal Albert Hall opened, the synth's inclusion tonight is a testament to the musical growth the hall has witnessed over the years. Mering's voice fights through the backlog of greats, singeing its mark on the walls. She sings, ‘this is how it feels to be in love’ as her tone becomes more definitive. Her confidence now radiates with her lyrics, ‘I know the meaning, I know the story, I know the glory’. There is no longer a hesitation in her voice. Finally, the music grows to the size of the hall.
by HYS
I
Ma-ya On-ga-ku. Five syllables which don’t so much as roll off the tongue but present small, insular explosions. This is in a way comparable to the feeling evoked by the artist’s repertoire. But who is this enigmatic Maya Ongaku? One would not be at fault to assume that Maya is a solo act, or that she fronts a band, much as Rough Trade has done on their website. That is, despite the photo of the trio. But no, Maya Ongaku is an ensemble comprised of three childhood friends with roots in the seaside communities of the idyllic Enoshima – a small island 55km southwest of Tokyo. Tsutomu Sonoda takes care of vocals, guitar, synth (JUNO-6), caxixi shaker, and kick drum. Ryota Takano is on bass, drum machine (TR-8S), and maracas. Shoei Ikeda handles the sax, flute, keys, clarinet, Rhodes piano, and Moog synth. They take their name from the Sanskrit word Maya, often translated as illusion or magic; whilst Ongaku is the Japanese word for music, but is also a nod to the noise music and sound art collective Group Ongaku.
II
It is a balmy Friday night in September. Like a petulant child, Summer asserts itself, seeking to resist the entry of the next act. Autumn smiles knowingly in the wings. Straggles of people dot the streets of Hackney Central. Teens or twentysomethings in casualwear wait for their mates outside Paddy Power. Decidedly older flâneurs stroll about. Lone men hit the unc (pose) and hand-rolled cigarettes. Commuters spill out of the overground and onto the streets, making their way home. A small cluster makes a beeline for Valette Street, on which MOTH Club lies. Inside MOTH, the pretty bartenders banter with each other between pouring pints. Lying further within the venue, the hall is packed. Anticipant strangers stand shoulder to shoulder, smelling uncharacteristically pleasant for so crowded a room. With a quick glance around, people of various ages and backgrounds can be spotted; uniting them is their impeccable dress sense and taste in music. Ah. So, this is the kind of crowd Maya Ongaku attracts.
III
The band delves into tracks from their second and latest album, August’s Nothing Space Music released on Guguru Brain. Opening with “Vanishing Waves”, Sonoda’s Roland JUNO-6 starts to sing and is redolent of a sea organ. Such is complemented by his lulling soft vocals, which feel like secrets almost whispered into the mic, as well as Ikeda’s piano playing. This blends into the next composition in which Takano plucks smoothly at a bass guitar as Ikeda shifts from clarinet to the inviting sounds of the Moog. Bells and soft percussive sounds weave their way in and out of a delicate sonic tapestry tied together by Sonoda’s crooning. The audience can’t help but sway, entranced as one big breathing mass. On “Thinkingscape” a caxixi, acoustic guitar, and bass are drawn into conversation with each other to form an undulating berceuse. Whilst on a different number, the band makes use of a strange steel instrument with a haunting voice reminiscent of whalesong. The space of each track feels expansive and fluid. A highlight is Ikeda’s saxophone serenade on the almost 7-minute “Hisoku Blue”. Each musician shifts deftly between instruments and tracks as the spangled ceiling of the hall twinkles, reminiscent of the star motif on the cover of Nothing Space Music. The music itself is stripped back, organic, entrancing, and intimate – a gentle constellation of sounds. Maya Ongaku is magic music.
by RD
“I’m the Franz Kafka of having microbangs”, Kiki Hardstaff of microbanger half-speaks/half-taunts the crowd with dilated pupils. In our age of what they like to call “post-post ironic”, Kiki performs as a hybrid of ‘post-Brexit’ influences, mixing the callous dialogues of Slint and early Black Country, New Road with the messy narcotic sounds of hyperpop. Their EP microbanger was released earlier this year, a five-song manifesto as short and harsh as the hand-chopped hairstyle, and they take this to the underground of Deptford’s railway arches. After being asked what they were in their past life and how that has seeped into their current musical style, Kiki claims they were a hamster who fell into the cracks of the sofa in 2025 and was only pronounced dead after the stench of their body began to pervade the air. Use this image to aid your perception of microbanger’s image: they dress themselves in a sweet, coquettish style, but retrieve their lyrics from the crevices of a squat house couch, buried beside the evil TV remote, crumbs, butt-ends of cigarettes, old receipts…they unapologetically invite us to bask in the filth of young London adulthood, sardonically using the lingo from the cult of UAL who “wank over their own work”.
Their performance with their partner and bassist Johnny bursts through Deptford Junction’s ambient and dimly lit interior - most of the light comes from their descents into vocal mania and Johnny’s placating basslines. There is much satisfaction to be found in a collaboration involving two opposing sparks who appear to bring out the most visceral parts of each other: their sonic chemistry is addictive. The crowd is small yet devoted, bouncing to digital drum beats and fascinated by poesies of such self-deprecation. Even in the smoking area, people are surrounding Kiki for a taste of their incredibly quick-witted ways. They call themselves a ‘wordsmith’, their favourite words being ‘exponential’ and ‘spreadsheets’; there is no doubt they have a knack for poetic irony. Dictionaries of darkness are reserved for their lyrics - “I often think that someone should shoot me in the back of the head like a horse” - but as they say, they know that all their best races are still ahead of them.
Such tongue-in-cheek lyricism deserves a question which matches: in response to “which of your songs is an equivalent to masturbation?”, they answer ‘Twin Freaks’. Even their phone wallpaper is Laura Palmer. They are the protagonist of their own surrealist body horror - to describe them as ‘Lynchian’ would be too cliched as they bask under the spectral lights of Deptford Junction. Rather, their on-stage screams and pallid accoutrements channel the same furore as Laura. They exercise a total pillbox of language by using words like ‘M-Cat’ and ‘Hegel’ in the same song. They are the graffiti on the doors of a club toilet, with their song ‘Dialectics on the Bathroom Wall’ the spoken equivalent.
Johnny likens their partnership to a more twisted version of Paul and Linda McCartney, sweetly commenting that they too are two individuals who love each other and also make music. Indeed, they are the parents of an uncanny family of crunchy drum samples that go from trip-hop slow to hardcore fast and trancey synth sounds which accompany (think: Eraserhead baby with a bow on its head). McCartney is Johnny’s greatest musical influence, but as for physicality, his supposed alter-ego is Mr Sutcliffe, an elderly man whom he works with at a care home. Where other elderly people walk rigidly with their frames, Mr Sutcliffe struts (call him Pelvis Presley). The influence is evident in Johnny's controlled sways, which manifest in his playing; his basslines swagger up and down the fretboard, adding a subtly rich sound to Kiki’s penetrative soliloquies whilst digital phantoms play the abrasive samples and percussion coming from their laptop. Microbanger is Kiki and Johnny: the two sides of a lithium battery, a 2020s, ketamine-loaded, distant relative of Shakespeare. They’re the fucking microbanger; who the fuck are you?
By AJ
Tuuli Turunen is turning fashion back into theatre, finally. It’s the final night of fashion week, a tumultuous eight days of walking, wearing, and willing yourself awake. And yet first place has been nabbed at a gallery in Angel with relative ease. A feat, considering the difficulty of standing out in a field where everyone is so desperately clawing for attention. Produced by Ruairi Jane-Collins of Our Dear Friends and a thousand other helping hands, Turunen’s SS/27 show does it with ease.
Upon entry, a cluttered altar grabs the eye, piled with knick-knacks: a book, gumshoe desk lamp, rotary phone. The room is sparse, all wood floors and white walls with a single hanging (unpowered) lightbulb. While the Ground Floor Gallery at Candid Arts was not the company’s first choice, they still make it work, fashioning the room into something like an alternate-history Berkoff First World War dollhouse, as to say “Daddy’s off fighting in the steam-powered zeppelin corps, only the bravest of my dollies get to wear the pink hat.”
A menagerie of London’s coolest and most dark-haired loiter around the playing area, or perhaps on the giant pillow in the corner. Others sit at tables right in the line of fire: whether they are placed deliberately remains a mystery.
As the walks begin, it is clear why the night has been dubbed “Ain’t Nice”, with the show underscored by several songs from Sweden’s finest, Viagra Boys. Effortlessness flowed through every piece of the show, but with the caveat that masses of effort had been branded onto each molecule of cloth, of course.
Turunen has perfectly cast her show, each model a character in a story with each new look. The drunken it-girl, stumbling in a flamboyant military jacket down an imagined street, the bright pink docked-tasselled peacoat answering the question “what if Twiggy was George Harrison was Jack White?”. In a nod to Turunen’s Finnish roots, multiple models wear sister headpieces that turn them eyeless, pieces resembling Sauna Hats (assumedly).
The show breezes on as model after model whisper the crowd to submission until… the opiated baroque of a slowed-down Army Dreamers drifts in along with the last (and only light-haired) model: Millie Turner. The lights dim, the audience blinks, and Abigail Morris has taken the stage behind her. A beautiful two minutes ensue, Morris earning her tenure as one of the only people who are allowed to cover Kate Bush. Simultaneously, Turner rounds the corner and heads towards the home stretch and casually slings the lone lightbulb up. As its orbit comes back down, it lights: Mammy’s hero.
The final call with pinks and whites all next to one another practically spells out the word cohesion. There are flavours of war and nostalgia, an anachronistic childlike redux of things which might be recognisable if you look hard enough. Like Turunen’s show last year at Living Womb (formerly Algha’s Plantroom), this one was deeply, deeply entertaining. She’s very gifted in the ways of visual storytelling, and everything is a story. One’s a problem. Two’s a pattern. Three’s a next year. Between messes of “thank-you-for-coming”s and “wonderful-job”s, the hosts take a well-deserved victory lap: the room smiles back.
RB
___A Hat to Match by Now (US, 2025)
___The Ballad of St Nick’s Park by 300SkullsAndCounting and Jenny Sparks (UK, 2026)
___The Skills of the Star Pilot by Butterglory (US, 1994)
AJ
___All Thoughts Are Pray To Some Beast by Bill Callahan (US, 2009)
___Desde Que O Sambe E Samba by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (Brazil, 1993)
___JING’AN TEMPLE by SILVERWINGKILLER (UK, 2025)
RD
___Nana by Kikagaku Moyo (Japan, 2018)
___Sure, Ok by First Day Back (US, 2025)
___Halleluhwah by CAN (Germany, 1971)
HYS
___Paypig by Wildwood Daddy (UK, 2026)
___Molly by Patch+ (US, 2026)
___Janani by Thoom (US, 2026)
Pindrop is AJ, BW, EM, GKA, HYS, JR, LD, MLT, NF, OS, RB, RD, SE, TM
Contact us at @pindropzine (instagram) and pindropzine@gmail.com (email)