The last time I wrote about Llona, I said:
“Take Llona, for example. His Homeless album feels like a shelter for the broken, the lost, the ones searching for language for their ache. When he sings about transience and estrangement, he is not just performing. He’s offering pieces of himself. What fans feel isn’t just resonance, it’s recognition. People often underestimate what strong cords bind his listeners together. That kind of shared vulnerability creates community.”
I was wrong. Very wrong.
It’s beyond that.
I lived.
I think my feet hate me.
Let’s start there. Let’s start with the waiting. The hours of standing. The “is it starting now?” and “ah, we’re still doing soundcheck?” of it all. There’s something unholy about seven hours of standing — and yet, I stayed. I stayed through the hype men. Through the rumbling speakers. Through people vlogging beside me and the DJ screaming “are you ready?” even when we clearly were.
I’m not built for party culture. The waiting. The chaos. The overhyped overhyping. The moment I see a guy pour water on his friend’s head like it’s part of a prayer ritual, I have to close my eyes and regroup. But then — then the beat drops. Then the crowd moves like one body. Then the girl beside me, who hasn’t said a word for hours, starts screaming every word of Llona’s set like her life depends on it. And I get it.
I get why people show up like this. I get why they don’t sit down. Why they wait. Why they stay. I’m scrunching my nose at the noise one minute, and the next I’m yelling “this is crazyyyy!” like it’s muscle memory. It’s not about sense. It’s about release.
This isn’t just a show. This is ritual. This is family.
There’s a moment where Llona guzzles alcohol straight from a bottle handed to him by a fan. No hesitation. No need for introduction. And somehow, it doesn’t feel careless. It feels sacred. Like of course we pass him a drink. Of course he takes it. We’re in this together.
Before the main guest acts even hit the stage, something quietly remarkable happens: There’s room. Up-and-coming performers not on the set list are allowed to take the stage. They step up, raw and ready, and I find myself discovering new music mid-chaos. No forced intros, just sound and light and proof. It doesn’t feel like filler. It feels intentional. Like a lineage being passed in real time.
And then Another Day begins and the room… breaks. I watch bodies cave and rise. I watch strangers mouth the lyrics with trembling lips. I watch people hold each other without asking first.
There’s a moment right before Another Day begins in full — the track gives way, just briefly, for an interlude. A breath. And the crowd fills it. They don’t wait. They start screaming the lyrics at him — early, loud, word for word. And Llona? He lets them. And I think about him. About how it must feel — night after night — to stand on stage in cities people don’t usually tour, in states that don’t often get remembered. To see your words shouted back at you by people you’ve never met. To watch a room swell with sound you once made alone. There’s a kind of aliveness in that. A proof. That the ache you turned into music found its way into others. That even in the places no one expects magic from, magic answers anyway. Like your voice lives on the tongues of strangers.
And if you scanned the crowd — really scanned — you’d see it. The admiration. The passion. The knowing. These people didn’t just come to turn up. They came to honour something. To hold it in their chest and sing it back.
I feel an emotional transaction with the crowd that is powerful and profoundly intimate. I stand in the midst of it all – strangers – witnessing it both individually and collectively, and I sense an unbounded love. This love is true. I see a group of human beings, precarious and vulnerable, fun-seeking and alive, granted a brief time on this earth, each filled with a shocking potential for beauty and terror, good and evil, and with the extraordinary capacity to give and receive love.
At this moment, love is the appropriate response.
Kvlt is doing something quietly revolutionary.
The people behind Kvlt intrigue me; the network of bodies — tired, energetic, stylish — who believe in the gospel of sound. Who understand that survival sometimes looks like jumping to a beat that understands your ache.
Maybe that explains the urgency in their steps. The hours of working nobody really sees. I spoke to the tour manager, BadmanMide, earlier. He told me, “people don’t know what happens behind the scenes. They just see the finished work.” I believe him. It’s true.
I wasn’t the earliest to the event, but I was early enough to witness a bit of the backstage before the night unfolded. I saw them — drained, but moving. Walking back and forth. Getting things in order. People being checked in. Sound being tested. Sweat already forming before the first note played. And now, even as the event is in full bloom, they’re still here. Still working. Still watching the dream from just behind the curtain. Still walking back and forth, still trying to keep it all together. You can tell they believe in this. In what it could be. In how far it could go. They have a dream, and they’re willing to do whatever to see it through.
They’ve already done the work. They’ve already succeeded. Nobody really sees that part. They just see the lights, the sound, the energy. The finished thing. But I saw it. And I think they must be content.
And me?
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired and so alert at the same time. Seven hours, and still no one sat. The dance never dipped. The energy never slowed. And for a night I gave in to the wave. I documented what I could, held on to what I couldn’t. Vlogging is hard. Staying open is harder. But I tried. I noticed what I could. I left knowing I had missed some things — but I had caught the heart of it.
And Cold War? It means more now. I thought I understood it — until I heard it live. Until I saw how the room leaned in, how the lights fell just right, how my body reacted before my mind caught up. That song lives in my bones differently now. Some songs do that. They rearrange your understanding. They become more than sound. They become you.
I’ll-not-attempt-this-again-but…
I won’t lie — I can’t do this every other weekend. My knees can’t take it. My ears need rest. But there’s something about being in the room when it means something. When it doesn’t feel transactional. When it feels like you were allowed to witness something sacred.
As for Llona?
Llona owes me nothing.