Voka Gentle at YES Basement

Voka Gentle return to Manchester with a headline show in YES Basement, bringing new material that pushes their elastic sound into darker, stranger territory.

With two albums already under their belt, the London band (William J. Stokes and twins Imogen and Ellie Mason) have long been associated with a restless strain of experimental pop, balancing melodic instinct with a taste for disruption. Leaning into motorik electronics, psychedelia and experimental sound design, their songs rarely settle where you expect them to, favouring left-turns over neat payoffs – pop music that never quite finds its footing.

That approach is clear across the four tracks already released from their forthcoming album Domestic Bliss, which leans into eccentric choices and moments of deliberate friction. Textures feel unstable and off-kilter, with stray sounds and found details (a binaural recording of Morris dancers, anyone?) folded into the songs. ‘Cheddar Man’ and ‘K Sees The Deal Go Down’ sketch out a world that feels both playful and unsettled, while ‘Ultra Aura Glow’, featuring Scottish songwriter Hamish Hawk, introduces an unexpected vocal counterweight that works beautifully, Hawk himself on a strong run following 2024’s A Firmer Hand.

But it’s the first single, ‘Creon I’, that pushes towards the wildest territory, both musically and conceptually, exploring authority not just as power but as performance and spectacle. Drawing on Greek tragedy, we’re placed in 429BC Thebes as Creon asks Oedipus who in his right mind would rather rule and live in anxiety than sleep in peace. After Oedipus’ violent, eye-gouging abdication, the throne feels less like a prize than something almost impossible to avoid – and Creon can’t avoid it. Musically, the song mirrors that instability, swerving between tyrannical eccentricity and flashes of cosmic synths, never quite settling into one state for long.

Taken together, the singles suggest an album less interested in statements than in friction – music that refuses to be tied in a bow. It’s a long-held approach for the band, and one that’s drawn a lot of praise from the likes of Loud And Quiet as well as their musical peers. That includes The Flaming Lips, who invited Voka Gentle to open for them in London, ahead of a Wayne Coyne collab shortly after.

We managed to catch Voka Gentle at last year’s Nightgarden Festival, and their set was the highlight of our day. It’ll be great to experience that same raw, manic energy up close in YES Basement, when we’ll have had a healthy three weeks to wrap the new album around our ears.