OCT 24: The Ballet + Evripidis and His Tragedies + Panic Pocket at The Betsey Trotwood

THE BALLET

The Ballet is the musical alter ego of the NYC-based musician and writer Greg Goldberg. The Ballet combines a wry poetic style with pop romanticism and a queer DIY spirit to create literary and infectious pop gems. In addition to citing Stephin Merritt as a formative influence, Goldberg draws inspiration from a variety of pop artists and periods; from 60s bubblegum to 80s synthpop and 90s indiepop, fusing these genres in sophisticated and original ways. Formed in 2005, Goldberg has been joined by several friends over the years: Craig Willse, Marina Miranda (La Pequeña Suiza), Ginger Brooks Takahashi (MEN), and Michael O’Neill (MEN). The Ballet self-released their first two albums: Mattachine! (2006) and Bear Life (2009). These records caught the attention of indie label legends Fortuna Pop!, who released their third album, I Blame Society (2013). After FortunaPop! closed shop, The Ballet partnered with Fika Recordings, who released their fourth and fifth albums: Matchy Matchy (2019) and Daddy Issues (2023). Goldberg is currently working on Ballet’s sixth album, arranged entirely on the Roland Jupiter Xm synthesizer, titled “Nothing Straight.”

EVRIPIDIS AND HIS TRAGEDIES

Evripidis and His Tragedies is the alter-ego of Evripidis Sabatis, a multi-disciplinary artist from Athens living in Barcelona. The "Tragedies" are the devastating, confessional, self-sarcastic and often darkly humorous pop songs that draw on his classical piano training, queer sensibility and storytelling skills, to examine and ultimately own up to the vicissitudes of life. Evripidis' pop inclinations take us for a bumpy, dancey ride across the fine line between tragedy and joie de vivre. 

In 2021, Evripidis released his fifth album Neos Kosmos, combining his love of Doo Wop, Girl Groups, New Wave, Indie Pop and Bedroom Pop with richly textured electronic soundscapes, followed by a handful of singles, with Just a Little Wiser being the latest. Evripidis is currently working on new music.

Evripidis and His Tragedies has performed at international festivals like Primavera Sound, FIB, Indietracks, Eurosonic Noordeslag, etc, and in a plethora of venues in Spain, Greece, UK, Germany, France, Portugal, USA and Mexico.

PANIC POCKET

Panic Pocket are recognised for their cathartic musical storytelling about shaking off bad relationships, the life-changing nature of female-friendship and the perils of online dating, "delivered with a wry sense of humour and an undeniable charm” – For the Rabbits.

Tickets from wegottickets.com/fikarecordings

Brutalligators - Train Wreck [Digital]

Artist: Brutalligators
Title: Train Wreck
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika112SG2
Release date: 22nd October 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

BRUTALLIGATORS JOIN FIKA RECORDINGS WITH RAW AND RESILIENT SECOND ALBUM “STILL HERE”. NEW SINGLE “TRAIN WRECK” IS OUT NOW.

A queer indie-punk love letter to learning to accept all that life throws at you, with big sing-along choruses and heart-on-sleeve lyrics about relationships, friendship and gender.

Hitchin-based indie-punk four-piece Brutalligators are back with their second album, Still Here, a powerful, cathartic, and joyously loud collection of songs about survival, identity, and moving forward. From shout-along anthems to intimate confessions, the album explores grief, friendship, queer identity, aging, and that ever-complicated feeling of simply trying to exist.

“Sometimes you just need to write a banger” says Luke Murphy about the latest single ‘Train Wreck’. “We wanted to write a big, gang-vocals-driven, chanty, fun punk song, with big singalong choruses. I think this is one of our dumbest songs lyrically, in the best possible way. In saying that, “my life’s a punchline that I didn’t get – just keep on laughing and it might make sense in the end” feels like the perfect summary of the last ten years of my life.”

Following 2021’s This House is Too Big, This House is Too Small, the new record marks a sonic and emotional evolution for the band — trading heartbreak and endings for resilience, and healing, bringing the raw energy of Brutalligators debut with more melodic moments, blending the indie punk of PUP and Menzingers with the cleaner indie sound of Future Teens and Weezer.

Still Here is an album with the mantra of “I’m still here, and I’m alive” says vocalist/guitarist Luke Murphy (they/them). “Looking at how me and my identity hasn’t been accepted in the past, and focusing on the attitude of ‘fuck you, I am who I am, this is what makes me me’”. 

Still Here is a proudly DIY project, largely recorded, produced, and mixed by drummer Rhys Kirkman - a return to the homegrown feel of early EP Animals I Wish I’d Seen. Rich Mandell (Happy Accidents, Me Rex) recorded Hold Fast, allowing the light and shade to shine through with lush layers of synths, piano and organ, while What’s Next was engineered by Tom Hill (Modern Rituals, Muttering), who’s got a real knack for capturing the energy of a track; Tom had recorded the debut Brutalligators album.

Brutalligators are:
Luke Murphy - they/them (vocals/guitar)
Paul Wade - he/him (guitar/backing vocals)
Simo Lee - they/them (bass/backing vocals)
Rhys Kirkman - he/him (drums/backing vocals)

Brutalligators started in late 2016 when Paul and Luke met for a coffee and discovered a mutual love of 90s and 00s emo and hardcore. Having been in various hardcore and emo bands throughout the 00s and 10s, they decided to try and write some songs together and Brutalligators was born. Simo and Rhys joined soon after, before they debuted at The Good Ship in Kilburn in 2017. They self-released their first EP Animals I Wish I’d Seen in 2017, following with the second EP Friends I Wish I’d Had in 2019 via Real Ghost Records. Their debut album This House is Too Big, This House is Too Small was released in 2021 on Beth Shalom Records, which Noizze commented that the album “presents the band in their greatest, most intimate and most cathartic form.” Since releasing This House is Too Big… Brutalligators have been tearing up stages across the UK and Europe, supporting bands such as Fresh, Michael Cera Palin, Dikembe, Johnny Foreigner and Martha. 

Luke and Paul also run the vinyl subscription server Nothing Sounds Good, spreading the word of DIY punk and indie around the UK. Luke is also a contributor to How To Make Friends, a DIY promotion collective that runs gigs across the UK, and hosts the How To Make Friends podcast, which interviews DIY bands about what it is to be a musician today. Paul also plays in the party-metal collective Needle in the Cross, and makes award-winning short films under Wade Bros Productions. Rhys performs solo folk-punk as Rhys Kirkman. We think Simo might be a fey creature that sustains themself on glitter and multi-sided dice, but we are unsure…

Oct 21: Darren Hayman at The Theatreship

Darren Hayman performs his 2012 album The Ship's Piano. On a ship. On a ship's piano.

With support from Lila Tristram.

Tickets from wegottickets.com/fikarecordings

"In November 2009 I had this thing happen to me, where I ended up in hospital with a fractured skull. For a few months I felt constantly dizzy and was diagnosed with some deafness in one ear. Sharp loud noises bothered me greatly. I was told to rest and do nothing, but who knows how to do that?

Music always helps when I'm ill, so I started to make the simplest, quietest music to help me recuperate. I tried to make the music that I wanted to hear, which is perhaps what we should always doing, but in this case there was a direct therapeutic need.

I avoided any jagged edges. I kept imagining the sounds I wanted as round and smooth, like well-worn pebbles.

Lyrically I also found myself eschewing conceptual and metaphoric character led songs. I started to write the simplest and most direct words in the first person, something I have avoided for a few years.

If you are a songwriter and something bad happens to you, people say, "You can write a song about it at least." They mean well, but the big events in life have to seap out gradually with me and not in urgent, confessional bursts. The songs on this record are pleas for calm. As I get older I find I prefer small, quiet things.

All the songs were written on my ships's piano. 'Ship's Piano' is a colloquial term given to small-scale pianos that were used on boats. Mine was built in France in 1933 and folds away to resemble a sideboard. I wrote a song where I imagine its history. It's called 'The Ship's Piano'. "

Darren Hayman, 2012.

adults - flag [Digital]

Artist: adults
Title: flag
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika110SG
Release date: 14th Oct 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

Just a couple of weeks ahead of the release of adults’ second album, the band share “flag”, the final track to be previewed from “the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless”.

adults’ final single, flag, is a clash of voices, side-eyes at nostalgia, despair at gentrification and the hauntology of urban decay. Inspired by Fugazi’s Cashout, this song was reworked as many times as Elephant and Castle has been ‘regenerated’. It exudes anger at the estate agents, council leaders and landlords who decimate local communities for a quick profit, and then try to remake the ‘culture’ which they have evicted. 

adults’ new record is a pocketful of seeds, ideas, loves, fears and hopes which have sprouted, grown, and intertwined over the past two years. It's a jumble of indie pop, jangle, shoegaze, emo and country songs made in those moments in between. They say that the new album “gathers together echoes of the songs and bands we love into deeply personal songs about growth, change, loss and love, set to the background hum of a world which wants to crush all hope.”

The songs are patchworks of riffs, loops and overdubs stitched together by long time co-conspirator Rich Mandell over the course of 3 months recording on rooftops and warehouses in South London. This is the longest they’ve ever spent recording, (they did their first record in a day in a garage!) and have tried to put together a much more coherent, intentional record as well as just messing around with loud amps and gear they don’t have access to in their bedrooms!

FFO: los campesinos!, martha, breeders, radiator hospital, nana grizol, sleater-kinney, joanna gruesome, the beths, the pains of being pure at heart.

adults are a fast silly indie punk band of four long term pals (carl, joe, joely and tom) who love indie-pop, diy and burgess park. Containing members from various UK diy bands (Fresh, New Starts, Wolf Girl, Tomboy Grandpa, Top Deck) they write noisy awkward pop songs with crunching guitars, speedy drums and yelping dual vocals. Based in south London and firmly established in the UKs indie-pop scene, adults released their debut single ‘MSN’ with Art is Hard records (Bristol, UK), an EP with Caballito Records (Madrid, Spain) and their debut album ‘for everything, always’ came out in 2022 on Fika Recordings (London, UK). Collaborating on splits with much-loved Bitch Hunt ‘Space Armadillo EP’ and recently with Oxford’s Spank Hair titled ‘…in the big league’.

Influenced by the kindness and community of the UK diy scene, adults continue the fight to write one song as good as the world’s best band, Martha (Durham). 

They have a new album ‘the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless’ coming out on Fika on 31/10/2025 and will be playing shows around the UK with mates Felicette in October.

Oct 9: Allo Darlin' + The Wave Pictures at EartH Hall

Anglo-Australian indiepop heroes Allo Darlin’ are back with their first new music in a decade. We’re delighted to host them for the London leg of their UK tour - and there’ll be some very special guests joining them on stage.

Support comes from The Wave Pictures.

Face value tickets include a £1.50 venue restoration levy.

No questions asked concessions are available for anyone that can't afford a full price ticket, for whatever reason. No eligibility requirements - we trust you.

Tickets on general sale 10am April 9th.

Pre-sale exclusively via the Allo Darlin' mailing list from 10am April 7th - sign up here in advance to get the pre-sale link: allodarlin.com

adults - crying [Digital]

Artist: adults
Title: crying
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika110SG2
Release date: 23rd Sep 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

South-London indie-punks adults are back with their second full length album in October. The new single, crying, is the second track to be taken from the forthcoming LP “the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless”.

According to the band, crying, is some “bouncy, fuzzy junk about miscommunication in love”. Flailing somewhere between Trust Fund and Martha they sing about arguing in your head with someone you love about completely different things and learning that sometimes it’s better to just lay things out on the table. Featuring some excellent noodling by Fresh’s Joely it’s one of the album’s more straight up indie-pop tracks.

adults’ new record is a pocketful of seeds, ideas, loves, fears and hopes which have sprouted, grown, and intertwined over the past two years. It's a jumble of indie pop, jangle, shoegaze, emo and country songs made in those moments in between. They say that the new album “gathers together echoes of the songs and bands we love into deeply personal songs about growth, change, loss and love, set to the background hum of a world which wants to crush all hope.”

The songs are patchworks of riffs, loops and overdubs stitched together by long time co-conspirator Rich Mandell over the course of 3 months recording on rooftops and warehouses in South London. This is the longest they’ve ever spent recording, (they did their first record in a day in a garage!) and have tried to put together a much more coherent, intentional record as well as just messing around with loud amps and gear they don’t have access to in their bedrooms!

FFO: los campesinos!, martha, breeders, radiator hospital, nana grizol, sleater-kinney, joanna gruesome, the beths, the pains of being pure at heart.

adults are a fast silly indie punk band of four long term pals (carl, joe, joely and tom) who love indie-pop, diy and burgess park. Containing members from various UK diy bands (Fresh, New Starts, Wolf Girl, Tomboy Grandpa, Top Deck) they write noisy awkward pop songs with crunching guitars, speedy drums and yelping dual vocals. Based in south London and firmly established in the UKs indie-pop scene, adults released their debut single ‘MSN’ with Art is Hard records (Bristol, UK), an EP with Caballito Records (Madrid, Spain) and their debut album ‘for everything, always’ came out in 2022 on Fika Recordings (London, UK). Collaborating on splits with much-loved Bitch Hunt ‘Space Armadillo EP’ and recently with Oxford’s Spank Hair titled ‘…in the big league’.

Influenced by the kindness and community of the UK diy scene, adults continue the fight to write one song as good as the world’s best band, Martha (Durham). 

They have a new album ‘the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless’ coming out on Fika on 31/10/2025 and will be playing shows around the UK with mates Felicette in October.

Brutalligators - Hold Fast [Digital]

Artist: Brutalligators
Title: Hold Fast
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika112SG1
Release date: 17th Sep 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

BRUTALLIGATORS JOIN FIKA RECORDINGS WITH RAW AND RESILIENT SECOND ALBUM “STILL HERE”. NEW SINGLE “HOLD FAST” IS OUT NOW.

A queer indie-punk love letter to learning to accept all that life throws at you, with big sing-along choruses and heart-on-sleeve lyrics about relationships, friendship and gender.

Hitchin-based indie-punk four-piece Brutalligators are back with their second album, Still Here, a powerful, cathartic, and joyously loud collection of songs about survival, identity, and moving forward. From shout-along anthems to intimate confessions, the album explores grief, friendship, queer identity, aging, and that ever-complicated feeling of simply trying to exist.

New single “Hold Fast” was an early track for the record, says vocalist Luke Murphy. “It’s a song about that feeling of grief, and rebuilding through changing the space around you, but we wanted it not to be a straight-up sad song. We didn’t really succeed with that! Lyrically, I was listening to a lot of Sly Withers’ Overgrown when I was writing this track, and loved the garden metaphors they use. Paul gave me the line ‘I think you would be proud of the garden’ and it slotted straight in.” There’s a balance of light and shade to Hold Fast, pulling from both indiepop influences and an emo-adjacent landscape.

Following 2021’s This House is Too Big, This House is Too Small, the new record marks a sonic and emotional evolution for the band — trading heartbreak and endings for resilience, and healing, bringing the raw energy of Brutalligators debut with more melodic moments, blending the indie punk of PUP and Menzingers with the cleaner indie sound of Future Teens and Weezer.

Still Here is an album with the mantra of “I’m still here, and I’m alive” says vocalist/guitarist Luke Murphy (they/them). “Looking at how me and my identity hasn’t been accepted in the past, and focusing on the attitude of ‘fuck you, I am who I am, this is what makes me me’”. 

Still Here is a proudly DIY project, largely recorded, produced, and mixed by drummer Rhys Kirkman - a return to the homegrown feel of early EP Animals I Wish I’d Seen. Rich Mandell (Happy Accidents, Me Rex) recorded Hold Fast, allowing the light and shade to shine through with lush layers of synths, piano and organ, while What’s Next was engineered by Tom Hill (Modern Rituals, Muttering), who’s got a real knack for capturing the energy of a track; Tom had recorded the debut Brutalligators album.

Brutalligators are:
Luke Murphy - they/them (vocals/guitar)
Paul Wade - he/him (guitar/backing vocals)
Simo Lee - they/them (bass/backing vocals)
Rhys Kirkman - he/him (drums/backing vocals)

Brutalligators started in late 2016 when Paul and Luke met for a coffee and discovered a mutual love of 90s and 00s emo and hardcore. Having been in various hardcore and emo bands throughout the 00s and 10s, they decided to try and write some songs together and Brutalligators was born. Simo and Rhys joined soon after, before they debuted at The Good Ship in Kilburn in 2017. They self-released their first EP Animals I Wish I’d Seen in 2017, following with the second EP Friends I Wish I’d Had in 2019 via Real Ghost Records. Their debut album This House is Too Big, This House is Too Small was released in 2021 on Beth Shalom Records, which Noizze commented that the album “presents the band in their greatest, most intimate and most cathartic form.” Since releasing This House is Too Big… Brutalligators have been tearing up stages across the UK and Europe, supporting bands such as Fresh, Michael Cera Palin, Dikembe, Johnny Foreigner and Martha. 

Luke and Paul also run the vinyl subscription server Nothing Sounds Good, spreading the word of DIY punk and indie around the UK. Luke is also a contributor to How To Make Friends, a DIY promotion collective that runs gigs across the UK, and hosts the How To Make Friends podcast, which interviews DIY bands about what it is to be a musician today. Paul also plays in the party-metal collective Needle in the Cross, and makes award-winning short films under Wade Bros Productions. Rhys performs solo folk-punk as Rhys Kirkman. We think Simo might be a fey creature that sustains themself on glitter and multi-sided dice, but we are unsure…

Sep 13: Fortitude Valley at New River Studios

FORTITUDE VALLEY

Fortitude Valley is the brainchild of Laura Kovic. Taking influence from the likes of The Beths, The Go-Go’s and Pavement, what results is a ludicrously addictive cocktail of heart-stopping indie-punk power-pop melody and a back catalogue of songs that’ll be living in your head, rent free, for evermore.

adults

Combining elements of indie-pop, punk, emo and just a little bit of 2009 vintage math-rock for good measure, adults are four pals trying to find their way in a disintegrating world. Reflecting on how we look after ourselves, one another and people in our community; their songs are a riotous collision reminiscent of Johnny Foreigner, The Beths or Trust Fund, bursting with crunching guitars, speedy drums and yelping dual vocals. Faster, messier and sillier than they have any right to be, adults are a hopeful and joyous noisy pop band based in South London.

Lanny

Lanny is the solo project of Lan McArdle (Ex-Vöid, Joanna Gruesome). The project explores an idiosyncratic, deconstructed take on the hook-heavy guitar pop they’re known for. Lanny is a sound-world of its own, one that takes in everything from country to indie rock to trap to abstract ambient. Their debut album bliss!! bliss! bliss was released on Gob Nation in October 2024.

Tickets on sale from wegottickets.com/fikarecordings

Pelts - Swimming [Digital]

Artist: Pelts
Title: Swimming
Format: Digital EP
Cat#: Fika111
Release date: 10th Sep 2025
Bandcamp

Pelts are Cat, Louise and Eilidh, a Copenhagen based three-piece combining a playful mix of post-punk and minimalist riffs. Swimming is their debut EP, 4 direct powerful tracks that are bound to appeal to fans of Grass Widow or Electrelane.

“Lyrically, Cat’s always working through her neurosis”, the band explains, “but instrumentally, it’s all about screwing around and letting the collaboration between the three of us create our sound. We all have slightly different approaches to writing for each of our instruments (and sometimes each others’), which can end up creating some contrasts that swing between feeling disjointed and feeling harmonic. We try to embrace the tension and sit through it.”

The artwork and title reflect a fluid-like quality in the songs that comes from the simple setup of guitar, bass and drums playfully interacting with each other while also doing their own thing and sometimes playing their own little melody.

The EP’s title track Swimming sums up Pelts, combining the punchy and the weird, with a driving bass-line, the track slowly evolved with Cat bringing the vocal melodies and Louise fitting out the puzzle pieces with the guitar hooks. Eilidh adds that it’s “the song during which we found out how fast Cat can play the egg!”.

Recorded live with Christian Ankerstjerne in Vindmøllevej, Copenhagen in December 2024, the EP captures Pelts perfectly, pretty bare bones but playful, with the band fully embracing the available percussion and keeping the background screams from an early take on Stressed.

Video by Nik Vestberg.

The video for Swimming was filmed over a few hours on a sunny day in Copenhagen in August 2025. It was shot on a LomoKino camera, a simple, manual, 35mm film camera from Lomography designed to shoot short movies on standard 35mm film.

You crank a handle to expose multiple frames per frame of the film, which you then scan and line up to form a movie. Swimming is made up of 1257 frames, spread over eight rolls of severely damaged Kodak Ektachrome slide film, which expired in 1992.

The result is an antidote to HD perfection and AI-generated video.

Pelts is an Aries trio with roots in London’s DIY scene. The band consists of three friends who came together in Copenhagen after many years in various projects such as Molar, Fever Dream and local twee punks Enids. The Pelts name refers back to the animal associated with their shared star sign.

Pelts are:
Cat: drums + vox 
Louise: guitar + vox
Eilidh: bass + vox

https://www.instagram.com/peltstheband/

adults - patterns [Digital]

Artist: adults
Title: patterns
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika110SG1
Release date: 26th Aug 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify

South-London indie-punks adults are back with their second full length album “the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless” in October. 

Out now, “patterns” is the first single taken from it. A shoegazy, dream pop song about death and everything which follows. Sparkling synths echo the nostalgia of dancing into the night at the Moth Club or sepia soaked photos of shows at Power Lunches. Looping and looping as the song builds until you forget the alienation you feel as everyone moves away from what was once the centre of your small universe.

adults’ new record is a pocketful of seeds, ideas, loves, fears and hopes which have sprouted, grown, and intertwined over the past two years. It's a jumble of indie pop, jangle, shoegaze, emo and country songs made in those moments in between. They say that the new album “gathers together echoes of the songs and bands we love into deeply personal songs about growth, change, loss and love, set to the background hum of a world which wants to crush all hope.”

The songs are patchworks of riffs, loops and overdubs stitched together by long time co-conspirator Rich Mandell over the course of 3 months recording on rooftops and warehouses in South London. This is the longest they’ve ever spent recording, (they did their first record in a day in a garage!) and have tried to put together a much more coherent, intentional record as well as just messing around with loud amps and gear they don’t have access to in their bedrooms!

FFO: los campesinos!, martha, breeders, radiator hospital, nana grizol, sleater-kinney, joanna gruesome, the beths, the pains of being pure at heart.

adults are a fast silly indie punk band of four long term pals (carl, joe, joely and tom) who love indie-pop, diy and burgess park. Containing members from various UK diy bands (Fresh, New Starts, Wolf Girl, Tomboy Grandpa, Top Deck) they write noisy awkward pop songs with crunching guitars, speedy drums and yelping dual vocals. Based in south London and firmly established in the UKs indie-pop scene, adults released their debut single ‘MSN’ with Art is Hard records (Bristol, UK), an EP with Caballito Records (Madrid, Spain) and their debut album ‘for everything, always’ came out in 2022 on Fika Recordings (London, UK). Collaborating on splits with much-loved Bitch Hunt ‘Space Armadillo EP’ and recently with Oxford’s Spank Hair titled ‘…in the big league’.

Influenced by the kindness and community of the UK diy scene, adults continue the fight to write one song as good as the world’s best band, Martha (Durham). 

They have a new album ‘the seeds we sow are sprouting buds nonetheless’ coming out on Fika on 31/10/2025 and will be playing shows around the UK with mates Felicette in October.