As the curtain comes down on punk legend Jordan Mooney’s adventure with the big tribute night over at Concorde2 earlier in the month, this all-dayer at the Hope & Ruin feels like a baton being passed on to the nu generation. Hosted by DFWU, Ruinfest features some of Brighton’s brightest alongside a few killer out-of-towners. And with war, strikes, abortion rights and relentless inequality splattered all over the headlines, what a time to be angry about stuff. Rich pickings if you’re in a band with something to say…
The mayhem starts in the downstairs bar with London three-piece Deuxes. Sisters Francesca and Martine Brighton (really?! Yes!) take us through a joyfully played set of slick r’n’b with some seriously slinky basslines. The sisters’ voices soar and Quincy Jones should definitely produce their next record.
The first local band of the day is the splendidly named Muff. When not screaming her justifiably barbed lyrics, lead singer Jade’s vocal has a touch of Amy Lee and the band thunder and thrash around her. Muff save the best until last with ‘Feminine Dream’, a chopshop number that starts disco, passes through Two Door Cinema Club and on to a very, very big chorus. Watch this crew closely, they have serious potential.
Next up is a Q&A with the Artwear Collective, a group of local designers and artists who host a roundtable with illuminating views on fast versus sustainable fashion and its intersection with the merch tables of the world. It’s a refreshing little pitstop and it’s great to see these young talented artisans talk so candidly. Primark, your days are (hopefully) numbered.
The festival heads upstairs and drops a couple of gears with the dark, contemplative sounds of Anknee. She is gifted with a ridiculously good voice and there’s a hint of Americana in her sound. Local visual artist Innerstrings has set up shop too and the stage is a kaleidoscope of glitching projections and midi grids. The songs are emotional, powerful, tales of love’s labour’s lost, and perhaps found too and the growing audience is absolutely rapt.
It’s all back down to the bar for an absolute car crash of a set from Manchester’s magnificent Slap Rash. And when we say car crash, we mean we felt like we’ve been in one when the final chords ring out. It’s brutally intense stuff from brother and sister team Amelia and Hugh, a two-piece preaching sermons from behind a drumkit and a heavily distorted bass. Touchstones here are Squid, Panic Shack and The White Stripes if they were called The Black Stripes and the final song mantra “Every day I show my teeth” is a very fitting lyric indeed.
It’s back up the stairs again (we’re not complaining, it’s burning off the booze-based carbs) for Slug Puppie. An effervescent, infectious and imperiously confident performance from this Bristol two-piece. With a Buzzcocks bass and a thrash finale that covers Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’ this is a band you must catch next time they’re in town.
Anyone who has seen Lambrini Girls lately will know that they are kinetic, chaotic, in-your-freakin-face delight. Their pretty basic agitated punk sound isn’t really the point, they are an audio-visual, politically motivated psychosocial experience and lead singer Phoebe Lunny is clearly on a mission. The pub is heaving as Lunny moves from stage to floor to bartop to street (yes, street) and the huge audience are having the wildest time. Good old Macca played it very safe at Glastonbury not 24 hours earlier but if relevance got you higher billing then this lot should be headlining those big festival stages. Lambrini Girls are a joyously nihilistic riot with a conscience and a message.
After that absolute hullaballoo we’re feeling drained, so we load up on loaded fries whilst O Hell provides nourishment for the soul. Darkly gothic electro grunge pulses out of the speakers as Nico is reborn before us. Prowling the stage, O Hell is a classy performer with a big voice and we’d love to see what she can do on a bigger stage.
>One of Brighton’s buzziest bands, CIEL arrive and the evening moves from the back room at the pub to the supersized stadium. An ambitious, portentous band with a shoegaze sound and an eye on bigger prizes. The firestorm of fuzzy guitar envelopes singer Michelle Hindriks’ delicate vocal and new single ‘Fine Everything’ is a standout.
Bringing down the curtain are another Bristol band, Wytch Elm. They owe a big debt to Hole and maybe a smaller one to Wolf Alice and although things take a little while to get going, once the fire is lit Caitlin Elliman and her coven have a deliciously dark and macabre rock sound. Innerstrings amp up the projections and with that end-of-the-all-dayer exhaustion taking hold, the room feels suddenly like part of some slightly sinister seance and we expect Elliman to break out the robes at any moment. It’s unsettlingly fabulous stuff.
As the final chords echo down Queen’s Road Ruinfest tells us one thing loud and clear: the punk spirit is alive, it is well and it is kicking. The young artists featured on today’s line-up have real teeth and they will bite. And whilst the old folks continue to spectacularly fuck things up, the young folks are here to tidy up the mess, all to an absolute belter of a soundtrack. If there’s still a planet earth in 2023 and if there’s a Ruinfest 2023 taking place upon it, we will be first in the queue.
Ruinfest, Hope & Ruin, Sunday 26th June 2022
Words and photos by Jason Warner
