Bristol
10 October 2025
A miscellany of maltreated melody and cantankerous circuitry that the screen delighted in pushing further, as bleak municipal concrete was evilled into a host of mirrored faces. Their diverging contours covered in glitching splashes and plumby narration, vividly vexing some domestic dystopia. I’m used to seeing Liles within a Nurse With Wound or Current 93 context, so it’s brilliant to finally taste a solo show from this prolific powerhaus.
And what a trippy concoction of goodness he was honouring us with tonight, splattering a lovely shot of noise as on-screen Julie Andrews morphs into a naked crucifixtion. The sonics, strobe-shot and crippled, a quirky playschool of personal obsession shadow-shafted and scattered on rusty synapse. That Wham “Choose Life” video raising an audience cheer jivering the screen, repurposed in super vibrant colours to a lock-grooved toffee hammer of loopage that had you seat-dancing along. The puppeteer shifting in an eerie aural anagram-like creep as your eyes hooked into a host of stereoscopic lights flickering oily faces and rotating eyes. A glitterati glamour falling in multiples, rostrum-nuzzling smokey ghosts from punting lips. The screen sonically attached to every twist and turn, the crowd cheering further as things descended into verbal obscenity (always nice to hear the c-word in a cultural context).He waved back in cheeky acknowledgement, after which a parade of crafted electronica skittered into a barrage of hi-viz space age. Airbrushed imagery I used to go giddy over as a kid (and still do to be fair, judging by the amount of secondhand sci-fi littering my abode), affixed to a whirring soundscape skinny dipping a drip-dry finish.
Re-taking the reins, The Utopia Strong started by layering up chiming clocks and rubbed metallics. A slowly evolving space full of tapering shapes and vortexed growth. Mr York adding flute to the modular carpet Steve Davis and Kavus Torabi supplied. A rich and heady concoction, edged in feathery floating viewpoints and ashened in peppery paper cuts. Mike’s face tied to every nuance, his back bent into extra delivery, swerving with the flow. That vapour-trailing vocal from Kavus caught in Rasputin repose, devotional hand in air. Steve beaming a fix grin throughout, meticulously adjusting the modular labyrinth in front of him supplying the melodic itch for the rest to scratch.Sounded like an improvised extension to the new album’s title track (maybe), re-glowed in a forty-five-minute rebirth. A teetering Tetris of revolving shapes, the unity was tight, attentive … you a disciple caught in the swaying nebula, its shimmering optimism constantly unwrapping fresh perspectives.
Erosive ellipticals that the screen ambered in a soft-focus weatherscape of changeability. A Turner-esque glowing sunset hazily hankered towards some yellowing oblivion, throwing out strange discolourations to the half-lit performers smeared in syrupy surges. Kavus’s bass reverberating Sunn 0)))-like, ricocheting the waspy tang of those goatskin pipes as I zoned out on the tidals pulsating that jellyfish of sound. When it all tumbled into silence the applause was so massive it promoted a ten-minute Brucey bonus of darting light trails and elasticated satellites. Fabulous doesn’t begin to describe it — if you get the opportunity to catch a show from this latest UK tour, grab it with both hands.-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
