Last time I saw HONESTY was when they opened for bdrmm at the Electric Ballroom on 19 March. I was so enamored with their show and so disappointed that it wasn’t the length of a full headliner. Their visuals and booming bass had a mesmerising effect, especially on such a big stage with such an intense soundsystem and projector screen the size of a mainstream cinema screen. The immersive, groundbreaking intensity of their set nearly overshadowed that night’s actual headliners.

This time around, the Leeds-based experimental collective headlined at a much more intimate venue, Next Door Records Two in Stoke Newington. The space doubles as a record shop and bar/cafe upstairs, with shows held in the cozy basement below. There’s an interesting intermingling of a small, familiar crowd, drinking, smoking, and laughing upstairs, who all gradually shuffle into the basement at showtime, beers in hand.

The atmosphere is immediately one of being at an immersive gallery experience. HONESTY’s performances are a powerful blend of audio / visual elements. The band performs as silhouettes behind a screen displaying an impressive array of images, collages, visuals, and disparate parts of a unifying collage that pulse and strobe along with the music.

Some of the visuals are organic: faces, animals, eyes, trees, fragments of nature. Other elements are digital and synthetic; strings of 1s and 0s resembling computer code, brain scans, and geometric fractals. The interplay between the organic and technological happening in bursts so brief that even the videos seem like stuttered photographs is reminiscent of Ryoji Ikeda’s gallery work in his Dataverse exhibitions.

The experimental audio/visual group manages to accommodate many different sounds without rocking the boat too much in their switch-ups; jumping from hip-hop to shoegaze to what The Guardian has described as a ‘goth Burial’.

Being in that tiny room with low ceilings and nothing but bursting visuals, with all the people around you bathed in a pale glow, bobbing their heads and nursing their beers, felt like stepping for a moment into a dream, completely consumed by the sound. The music is contemplative, ethereal, and dreamy, but rooted enough in bass to keep you tethered. While watching their sets, your mind never has the chance to drift, due to the constant stimulation of striking and flickering visuals.

Most of their songs were off their latest album, ‘U R Here’, playing ‘WWWWW?’, ‘MEASURE ME’, ‘TORMENTOR’, ‘NIGHTWORLD’, and ‘NORTH’, and also playing a couple of unreleased songs, opening with ‘Turps’ and towards the end, ‘Sorta Fine’. ‘Do Something’ is a standout for me, sounding like a conveyor belt of futuristic, underground, experimental sounds shuffling forward as if on an assembly line, constantly built upon and shifting.

I will say, the small room didn’t do their sound justice. Their music is larger than life when paired with the right equipment, and with good bass systems and surround sound, they really are an experience like no other, and the best way to take in the album.

Words and photos by Sydney Peterson