CONCERT REVIEW
ARTIST: Tinlicker
DATE: 4 October 2026
SUPPORTING ACT: Helsloot
VENUE: The Depot
CITY: Salt Lake City, UT
If there’s one thing that never fails me, it’s the post-New Wave electronica that first exploded out of the early rave scene. Techno, acid house, trance, progressive — whatever label you slap on it, the best of it can still hypnotize you or spin your head in the best possible way when it sneaks another song you love into the mix. One of my all-time favorites remains the Erasure “Oh L’Amour” rave remix. That track makes you feel like you were pooped out of a rainbow onto the back of a unicorn, running through Oz while eating Skittles in flavors that don’t exist yet. That is the power of this music when it hits right. What started with guys soldering motherboards in bedrooms and modular synths in basements — the lineage that runs from Yes, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream through the New Wave we grew up on — eventually became the intense, body-moving, soul-lifting dance music you can still put on and groove to even if you never leave the couch. In short, this is, never was, and never will be The Beach Boys. (I really hate The Beach Boys.)
So much of the absolute best electronic music I’ve ever absorbed came to me while I was living in Rotterdam in the late ’90s, drifting between raves and record shops. So when the invite arrived to cover the Dutch trio Tinlicker with Helsloot, even though I only knew a handful of their tracks, I already knew the night was going to feel like going home.
I walked into The Depot on a Sunday night and was surprised by how small the crowd still was — maybe forty people. I was also surprised, in the best way, by how alive the old rave culture still felt. Then Helsloot walked out and the stream of people started. He stayed mostly in the dark, playing a calm, flowing set with almost no vocals. One track Shazam identified as “Beautiful Losers.” It rolled out of the speakers and made the entire room feel suddenly vast, like the Depot had expanded into a stadium. Helsloot has this technique of taking a sound that feels like it was recorded in a canyon or an empty arena and then slowly pulling it down into the exact space you’re standing in. I hadn’t felt anything quite like that since the Yes shows I saw in 1998. Just peaceful, uplifting grooves — a little faster than typical dance tempos, the kind that settle into your body and let you move for hours without thinking about it. He played for about forty-five minutes and left everyone with a quiet musical high.
All of it yanked me straight back to those Rotterdam nights in ’97. The music then was wonderful in the same way: it moved you around the floor and filled your head with nothing but beautiful thoughts. This European electronica still has that rare ability to grab you by the chest and refuse to let go until you’re smiling.
It took less than ten minutes to clear Helsloot’s gear. The bouncers told me I had free run of the place for the rest of the night — shoot from anywhere. By the time the house lights dropped, the venue was packed. The steady stream had filled every corner.
Two keyboard stations with electronic drum pads sat under a massive screen that began throwing fractal patterns. A bald guy with a ginger beard (Jordi) took stage left. Micha took stage right. The fractals went wild and the most wonderful music erupted. Everyone was already dancing to “Sleepwalker.” Jordi grabbed sticks and started hammering the drum pads while the lights shifted colors like they were asking the crowd to move. If light itself could dance, this was what it looked like.
“Melancholia” was a crowd favorite even though the title was a complete lie — there was nothing sad about that moment. Then they slid into “Clarify,” a track I’d heard on a dozen compilations. Their vocalist Hero stepped up and sang like an angel had taken the microphone. She sounded perfect. The entire floor rose with her hands. Her voice made the synths behind her feel like they were summoning every good vibe and every scrap of hope the music has ever carried. By then most of us were already in some form of trance.
Halfway through “Awake Consciousness,” during the long build and the drop, it felt like thousands of tiny musical notes exploded off the main track and floated around the room as little drops of light. I wasn’t even on anything. I worked my way close enough to the front that they could see me, pulled my jacket aside, and showed the orange lion on my old Netherlands World Cup jersey. I got smiles and thumbs-ups from the whole band.
After a stretch of pure dancing — songs I’d only known from playlists — the mood shifted darker and more introspective. Hero sang with a voice full of anxiety, remorse, and something like fear. It was a live version of “Dancing in the Dark” from the new album Dreams of the Machine, and it was far more powerful than the recorded version. It pulled you in and made you respect the darkness instead of running from it.
They dropped a cover of Reflekt’s “Need to Feel Loved” that felt like it had been written for them. Then “Blowfish,” with the back screen flashing red and deep ocean blue until it looked like an Icelandic volcano erupting into freezing water — heat and ice at the same time. “Fractal” and “Less Than a Minute” followed.
The most familiar moment of the night was their version of “Children,” the track they did with Robert Miles. The piano line cut through the room and almost everyone recognized it. Somewhere in that song I spotted one of my daughter’s school administrators dancing with his boyfriend. I have no idea what they were on, but I’ve seen them at a lot of these shows. I still can’t imagine how anyone shows up for school the next morning after a night like this.
Hero took the mic for “I Want My Freedom.” Jordi and Micha kept signaling each other across the stage — raise this, drop that — while her pure, unprocessed voice carried the simplest, clearest message of the night. Then the lights and the spinning hurricane eye on the screen locked into “4AM.” She sang “I don’t want to live, you’re killing me,” then asked the room, “What do you have for this Salt Lake City?” and the whole crowd sang the next lines with her. Most people by that point were just floating in their own private universe, eyes closed, swaying.
Right before “God in You,” Hero opened up to the room. She thanked everyone for coming, then said the things that needed saying: people should be able to love whoever they want without anyone trying to stop them. And then, louder, with the entire venue already rising: “I say this with all women in full support — I AM JANE FUCKING DOE!” The place erupted. The most powerful song of the night rolled out:
You were born with wings
Why are you crawling through life?
You were born with wings
Why are you crawling through life?
(There is God in you)
Everyone was cheering and dancing. I didn’t even notice Helsloot had slipped back onstage until the four of them were finishing “Reborn” together. They waved, took a bow, and walked off. The room needed the breath.
They came back without Helsloot at first, then brought him in as part of the unit for “Choir to the Wild” and the Kosheen cover “Hide U.” They closed the main arc with “Because You Move Me,” the collaboration from five years earlier. Hero talked to us for a few minutes, smiling, telling us how good the Salt Lake crowd had been and how open we felt. Then she announced the real finale: “The Edge of Forever.” If you need one song to get completely hooked on this band, that’s the one. Released only a month before the show, it feels like a full musical voyage through every good thought and feeling the universe still has left. When the drop hit, the whole room was somewhere close to musical nirvana.
A few minutes later I walked into the green room and said, “Dat was een fantastische set.” I put my hand out to shake and Jordi pulled me into a hug instead. Helsloot did the same. We talked for a couple of minutes in my broken Dutch and they seemed genuinely happy that a Yank could manage even that much. They told me Helsloot had moved to Utrecht so the three of them could work together more easily. Hero said Salt Lake had been different in the best way. In other cities the crowds are often high; here, when she made eye contact she could actually connect with people. She called the night beautiful. I’d never thought about it that way before. I got the autographs, more hugs, and left.
On the drive home my wingman Will couldn’t stop talking about the positive charge still running through him. He kept saying how much he loved the feeling the music and the message had left him with. Later he told me it was one of the most beautiful and inspiring musical experiences of his life.
That is the kind of night this music can still deliver when everything lines up. Tinlicker have one more U.S. date this year — December 11 in Brooklyn. If you’re anywhere near it, go. Next time they come through the States (and not only at EDC Vegas), treat them as required viewing.
Cheers, Tinlicker. En dank u wel.
#electronica #trance #upliftingfemaletrance #tinlicker #herobaldwin