Debut UK tour for Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Southsea date

The Berlin-based art-rock ensemble have brought out Reaching, promising a tense, mesmerising waltz blending spoken-word intensity with explosive guitars. Known for their blend of art-pop, ambient noise and dark folk, the band has drawn comparisons to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey and Aldous Harding. They describe the new single as exploring the “tension between communication and disconnection, presence and absence, silence and noise.”

On Friday, May 16 at 1.10pm they are playing Patterns, Brighton; then on Saturday, May 17 at 10.30pm they are at Fabrica, Brighton. The tour continues on Sunday, May 18 at 7pm when they play the Wedgewood Rooms in Southsea.

“I have played the UK before with an older band,” says Lucy. “But this is the first real tour. I would be happy to play most places really, but I do think the UK has produced a lot of music that has influenced the music that I like.

“For the tour, I suppose I'm trying to manage my expectations really. I really have no idea what it's going to be like but what I would like to do is to connect with the audiences and maybe get to know some people that we can work together with in the future. It's actually been a while since I have played an English mother tongue speaking country. We mostly tour Europe and most European countries will speak English and listen to a lot of English music but I do think that the lyrics are really quite a big focus for me.

“I grew up in Johannesburg but I was living in Cape Town for seven years before I moved to Berlin so there was a lot of cultural influence. I left Cape Town because I was wanting to tour much more and it was quite challenging to do that from there. You are too far away from any established touring circuits and I was finding it quite difficult. It was quite hard for me to get into the UK as a tourist so that was not really an option, but residency in Berlin has meant that I could travel and Berlin is a great place to be.

“I started the band a long time ago in 2015. I formed The Lost Boys and I had not really played in bands at that time. But I had made a debut album a few years before that and it ended up well made and well mixed and produced but it didn't really sound like me, and I realised that I had to start from nothing. You've got to muddle your way through.”

It was all about finding the sound: “And the reason I gave the band the name that I did is because I wanted it to be more of a collaborative project.”

When Lucy moved to Berlin she had to start with new players again: “It has been slightly shifting but we have a pretty strong core group.”