Blog
To Voice Resistance
5/26/2026
I'm not one to rush for a concert ticket, but my excitement for two particular artists had me questionably plan visiting two shows on subsequent nights in an already busy week. The artists in question? They couldn't be further apart!
Joey Valence & Brae played at Paradiso on Tuesday May 19th 2026. Hip hop of the boom-bap variety, their music is extremely direct. Almost every song is loud, and built to start a party, or occasionally a fight (Start a Fight). They put influences from dance, breakbeat, dubstep and classic hip hop to work and get the whole room partying, including the balconies and bar staff.
Joey Valence & Brae live (not this show), by connorpnw
Maruja played at Melkweg on Wednesday May 20th 2026. The Manchester group makes a much more spiritual, almost mystical act, using saxophone, droning basses and noisy synthesizers to entrancing effect. This music is loud too, but raw and primal. This is not a party. It is part protest, part community gathering, part religious experience. The intensity of a punk show, at the volume of a metal show, with vocals part celestial chants, part grounded in poetry and hip hop.
Maruja saxophonist Joe Carroll staring into the crowd as if it were the abyss in 2024 (not this show), by Argiris Liosis
Vocalist and guitarist Harry Wilkinson is a prophet of sorts, a voice for something much bigger than himself. The spoken-word style declarations like Love is my God, I don't care what you say and We are eternal beings living human experiences are followed with primal melodic chants, sounds that are hard to believe to be coming from the person on the stage.
Musically, these shows were worlds apart, but a common ground struck me in a small moment.
"Who came here with their friends?," asks Joey Valence. A large part of the crowd raises their hands, shouting. "Now who came here by themselves?" A smaller but still significant part of the crowd does the same. Having no friends with, well, taste in music, I do the same. "I want you to turn to the person next to you and say hi."
There is a moment of casual talk, a few hundred conversations winding up simultaneously. Joey Valence and Brae look around like they have just put some so far unacquainted friends in touch. "Everyone in here came to dance, to party. Everyone is this room is your friend."
A night later, halfway through a musical journey of quiet saxophone-synthesiser soundscapes and sludging post metal, Wilkinson addresses the audience similarly. "Our music is about community. So let us take a moment. Turn to the person next to you, whether you know them or not, and give them a big warm hug."
Joey Valence & Brae are the resistance to the idea that to grow up in this world, is to be too cool to dance, too old to get a little weird. Their latest album Hyperyouth is a celebration of youth; a call to get out there, dance like a big nerd and make new friends.
Maruja are a more explicit resistance to the individualism and hate that are taught us, but are counter to our nature, which is love and community. And what is a better celebration of love and community than music and dance? And oh yeah, moshing is dancing too. The call to help one's fallen fellow moshers is universal. "We may be aggressive, but our message is one of peace and unity."
Maruja vocalist Harry Wilkinson in 2024 (not this show), by Argiris Liosis
Music has long been a channel for protest, and perhaps more so now than ever. Though societally, we are under pressure, we are thankful to have the freedom for this music to exist, and a larger than ever consciousness that some things are not right. Protest is to voice the resistance to it. It can have many targets, and take many shapes.
And there is much to protest.
We are love in abundance and our courage can't be tamed
Intuition, we are brave, inner visions not afraid
Expressions take us higher before the love starts to fade
Music lifts our spirit and love uplifts our souls
Ancient language healing, so let the music take control
Maruja, Reconcile (2025)