I meet up with my friend Astro at a Spoons in South London around 7, looking to get a few pints in before the show. It’s his 20th birthday, and luckily a few months earlier I’d been rewarded for staying up until 2am with 2 tickets to see our favorite band The Hellp. The tickets sold out in under a minute, but thankfully I was quick on the draw. As we drink our coronas, we look around and see how many other fans have had the same pre-show idea. For every normal guy just trying to have a cheap pint at this spoons, there is a parallelled skinny jean leather jacket wearing young person, doing their best to emulate The Hellp’s uniform. I tell Astro that right now this might be the most esoteric Wetherspoons in the country. We mingle with a few of them, wondering who the opener will be as the band had posted a graphic with the subsequent shows’ supporting acts, but only 7 asterisks for tonight’s show. Astro thinks that the asterisks mean there’s no opener, but I hold out hope that they’re standing in place for damon r., an artist they’ve collaborated with before. When 8 o’clock rolls around, we make our pilgrimage to Corsica Studios, shaking on the walk over partly from the brisk British cold but also in anticipation. 

Before I get into the show itself, a bit about The Hellp. Despite having been releasing music since 2015, the Los Angeles based band only released their debut album LL in September  2024. They’ve released and later removed a couple EPs from streaming services over the years, but have been influential among great artists since their inception, with the music video for their song Confluence having been a major inspiration for Frank Ocean when he worked on Blonde (2016). In a world where so many choose to hide behind a layer of irony in everything they do, Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy are unwaveringly determined to be completely sincere in their artistic output. In the few interviews they’ve given, they emphasize how seriously they take their art and how nothing they do or say is a joke. Above all else, the duo want to create something “real and beautiful” that they believe culture is lacking at the moment. The Face magazine has claimed that with their unconditionally genuine attitude, they “could be the last cool band on earth”, and I think I’d be inclined to agree. While they often reject categorization into any specific genre, when pushed for a way to describe their music the pair have called it “America”. Through all this, they’ve amassed a fanbase that cult is almost not a strong enough word for. 

We get to the venue and take our places standing shoulder to shoulder with the other skinny jean and leather jacket wearing devotees, and the agonizing wait for the band to perform begins. The venue’s smoke machines are working overtime. Astro is proven right when there turns out not to be an opener. Oh well. They show up around 9:20. 20 minutes late, but I don’t care. Good things come to those who wait. As soon as the pair hits the stage, the place explodes. 

Their presence up there is entrancing, illuminated in flashes of white, red, orange and blue. Noah belts out lyrics and flails around the stage erratically, like a man possessed, while Chandler hunches over countless knobs and monitors composing an electronic symphony unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. After a few songs, Noah pauses to apologize to the fans. There’s something wrong with his mic apparently. The distortion is off, or maybe the feedback. The crowd doesn’t seem to care though, and I’m with them on that. To my untrained non-musically inclined ears this sounds like the greatest concert I’ve ever been to. They play around further with the mic for a bit before it’s back to business, strobe lights flashing harshly, anthem after anthem. Most of the setlist is from their eclectic new album LL, but they sprinkle in a few older tracks too like Lord Jesus and Height. Each song is better than the last, and hearing them live feels like hearing them for the first time again. The energy in the venue reaches a crescendo with their final song, Ssx. The crowd knows every lyric, screaming the refrain “Feels like a memory of what we had”. I feel like when this concert ends and becomes just a memory of what we had, it will be one of my most treasured. Chandler works his magic on the synths, elongating the song, and the pair slink off stage sans goodbye during its drawn out ending. They leave us begging for more. 500 people are all chanting their names. After a minute or two, the duo return to stage for “one more song”, like we all knew they would. They launch into Go Somewhere, my favorite song of theirs, although it’s a very close race, and the crowd holds onto every word, wishing it would never end. Clearly they lied to us because shortly after the song finishes, Chandler kicks off Tu Tu Neurotic, their most popular track and the energy in the place reaches a new peak. It seamlessly transitions into their remix of Lady Gaga’s Just Dance, and the two say their final goodbyes, for real this time. They reach their hands out into the mob, which surges forward as if being summoned by some supernatural force, before pulling themselves away and disappearing into the darkness. Hot, sweaty and dehydrated, the crowd finally takes a moment to breathe. 

Making our way out of the venue, I stop to buy a hoodie to replace the merch of theirs I’d lost in a fire earlier this year, and the guy running the booth tells everyone I’m the last customer. We join what seems like half the crowd outside chain smoking waiting around for their chance to meet Noah and Chandler. We recognize and chat with a few people we’d met earlier or at shows of artists with whom The Hellp share a fanbase. It seems that despite neither of us living in London, Astro and I have become recognizable faces in this underground electronic dance music scene. After twenty minutes or so, the crowd has largely dispersed, leaving only about a dozen devotees. The doors to the venue open and two sweaty tall skinny jeans and Celine leather jacket wearing rock stars walk out before being politely surrounded. For two people that a subsection of the internet loves to hate on, they are some of the nicest and most genuine guys I’ve ever met. Chandler asks every fan who stuck around to meet them where they’re from and what their deal is. It catches a few people around me off guard just how willing they are to speak to everyone. He notices and compliments the California flag I’m holding, happy to see people from his home state. Astro and I talk to him about our neighborhoods in LA, and he tells us that NorCal has much better Mexican food than SoCal, which I don’t believe for a second but I’ll take his word for it since I’ve hardly been to the former. A fan tells Noah he’s working on a music video for their song RllyNice, and Noah tells him “he better make it really fucking good” and that he always checks out what fans send him. We take a picture with both of them holding the flag. Gotta represent. They both say the audio for the show was terrible, apologizing profusely. “That was like a 65/100”, Noah tells us. He’s the expert and I’m just a fan but if that was The Hellp at 65%, I’m not sure if I can imagine how good they’d be at 100. Noah lets us all know that they’re ramping things up in 2025; no more releasing one single a year, or disappearing for years at a time. They promise appearances at festivals in Europe and the States over the summer and new music soon. We all tell them we can’t wait. As I’m writing this, the band have just announced they’ll be playing at Coachella this year, so it seems they’re sticking to their word. 

If you don’t know The Hellp, get to know, because I have a feeling that after a decade of cult status, the genius of their project is starting to breach containment. 

Words by Jasper Harvey.