LONG FLING + SOLID PLEASURE – THE HOPE & RUIN, BRIGHTON 15.10.25
Now tonight is a very special night, we welcome Long Fling to the legendary Hope & Ruin in Brighton on the first of their super short 3 date UK tour; this truly is going to be a one off, so congratulations to Love Thy Neighbour promoters for organising this evening’s event.
Who are Long Fling and why is it special you may ask? Well Long Fling is the combined project of Amsterdam’s very own indie legends Pip Blom and Willem Smit, Pip of course being from the band Pip Blom and Willem from the band Personal Trainer, bands I’ve both seen before here in Brighton. This project has come together after a decade of collaborations between the pair, one song a year and now they have reached a point in time to put out their self-titled debut album and treat us to a very short run of shows and then sadly for us, it’s all over. So that is why tonight is so special, this very much could be the only time we get to witness the band live. On stage this evening the band is rounded out with Sal Rubinstein on drums, Darek Mercks on bass & Novation Bass Station, last but not least we have Tender Blom on guitar, the latter two both also being part of Pip Blom. Pip Blom aside vocals was playing a ASM Hydrasynth and Willem Smit was on vocals and guitar.
The band have tucked a few shows under their belts this year, making their surprise live debut in May at Amsterdam’s ‘London Calling Festival’, followed by six European festivals, including Dorset’s ‘End of the Road Festival’. After their current 3 UK tour dates there will be just 4 more dates across the Netherlands and then it’s over.
Anyhow, that’s the past and future, let’s talk about now, it’s 9:30pm and the band take up positions on the stage, Willem greets us in his usual happy way “Hey guys, what’s up? This is our first club show in the UK, let’s party!” and the band struck up into ‘Pig’. This was our first taste of what was to come from the album, Willem with his guitar doing a verse, then Pip who was also on her synth, the arrangements are kept very simple, but as the instruments grew in sound, we had both Pip and Willem singing over each other, what an opener of a song it was, it really gave a you a warm & fuzzy feel.
Sal’s drums kicked in hard for the start of ‘Mouse House’ as did Darek’s bass, a great vibrant bass line that continued to run throughout the whole tune. Whilst the song also had frenzied guitar from Tender, there came bursts of calm with Pips vocals, but then those chugging guitars came back, another highly enjoyable song.
“Hello, we are Long Fling, this is a little song called ‘Waste Line’” Willem informed us, it was of a slower pace, much slower drums, but plenty of cowbell, not much change in structure or pace, just simple and a beautiful constant flow.
We had a quick, “1,2,3,4” countdown and we were given our first cover song of the evening ‘I Never Get Lonesome’ originally an Arthur Russell song. This was a very nice tender song, it had a real country / Americana feel to it, it was at this point I noticed the way both Pip and Willem looked so tenderly at each other as they played and sang, it was beautiful to see and hear. The crowd were really struck by this and as you can imagine gave a massive applause at the end.
Willem now introduced the drummer Sal to the crowd as were taken into ‘Weird Peace’ This one had some really cool synth from Pip that gave the song quite a vintage feel to it.
Pip commented “I was talking to Williem today about how we have both played a lot of shows in Brighton, but the weird thing is for my band (Pip Blom) we have never played this venue, well we have played downstairs but never up here, so this is a first for us” she said pointed to Tender and Darek. She continued “yet Willem has played here six times in two years”, causing everyone to laugh. Willem announced the next song in a tongue in cheek way “this is a song off our first record”, the song was ‘Flung’ whilst this is their only album, the song was actually their first single, it’s a blinder of a song. It has a far more chaotic feel to it, a great beat, Willem is vocally louder bordering on shouting, which really contrasted to Pip’s very soft vocal responses. Darek dropped the bass guitar on this one to use his Novation Bass Station which really gave the song a different feel, Tender was really throwing himself about with his guitar too, again a huge cheer came from the crowd at the end with chants from someone shouting “play it again, play it again” and I honestly don’t think the crowd would have minded if they had.
Next came another cover of sorts, it was ‘Kiss Me By Candlelight’ Pip explained to the crowd “This next song was released on Pip Blom’s most recent album ‘Bobbie’ and was a collaboration with Willem’s band Personal Trainer, the album version is very electronic, but we have tried to make it quite different, so I hope you like it”. I’ve not heard the original myself, but the stripped back version fits in very well with the style of music from the Long Fling album.
Darek was back on bass guitar during ‘For Someone’, a very gently slow song, mostly sung by Pip, with Willem echoing the chorus. Another song in the set that made you feel just so happy to be there and be part of this. The Novation bass machine was also fired up once more by Darek with a cool electronic beat, the jangling guitars were back too. This song really carried you on a journey, as it went along, the guitars really started to soar and build. Willem bobbed about with his guitar and Tender grabbed a drumstick running it up and down his Fender Guitar strings creating a sort of “Seeeee Sawwww” sound. Awesome stuff.
“Thanks guys, thanks for coming, a big shout out to Solid Pleasure for their support, we are about half way through now” Willem exclaimed, Pip looking down at her setlist corrected him “three quarters”
‘Tossed’ came next, a real high energy noise bringer of a song, you could see the musicians were clearly having lots of fun up there, the band looking very relaxed, lots of fun being had, smiles and smirks at each other, lots of laughter. I’d spotted plenty of chugging and swigging of bottles of beers between songs going on.
“This next one is a cover” said Willem, the song was ‘Wicked Game’, a Chris Isaak song, one that I instantly recognised from car journeys as a kid. What a cover this one was too, Willem started with the first verse with Pip doing the chorus before flipping to her doing the verses and Willem on chorus. It was beautifully done, some lovely synth from Pip also in the mix, this really was so so good.
Willem broke some news to us “We have 3 more songs left, and we don’t have anything left to have an encore, as we don’t have any more songs to sing, so that will be it for tonight, thank you for coming guys”. He continued, “Normally Darek, Pip & Tender play in a band called Pip Blom and I play in a band called Personal Trainer, Pip & I we’ve been working on this album for ten years and we put it out a week ago, you can buy it after the show” (or from HERE) Pip interjected that drummer “Sal also plays in a really cool band called Queens Pleasure and this next song is kinda of the first song we wrote and is on the 7” record that comes with album”. “We also have T-shirts, and the song is called ‘Peter Dickens’” added Willem. It had a nice slow start with the synth playing, a beautiful bass line, Pips soft vocals starting things off with Willems calm reply, the song had a gentle build up totally captivating the crowd, building up and up, with both the band all speaking the lyrics in unison as the guitars built and built and then climaxed.
With no break we were into the final two songs of the set, the very lively ‘Cool Bottle Water Park’ and ‘Shoes’, before ‘Shoes’ Pip said “This has been a really nice first gig in this room”, Willem countered “and also a very nice last ever gig in this room” to lots of laughter and cries of no from the crowd, “what are you saying, you can always come back” exclaimed Pip in reply. ‘Shoes’ was another that ended with crazy mad guitars and then it was all sadly over and the very attentive crowd gave a huge round of applause and cheers.
Honestly what a night, I’m not saying that because I’m a big fan of Personal Trainer & Pip Blom, but this was just such a beautiful intimate evening, a musical partnership born out of love and built upon year upon year. The band made up from close friends of respective bands who know each other, all so at ease with each other, musically all so in tune. I really can’t think of another gig I’ve walked away from just feeling so content and happy, this gig tonight really was utterly heart-warming. As Willem left stage I jokingly said to him, “See you in 10 years for the 2nd album”, it took him a moment to compute and he jokingly replied “Ah yes of course”. Tonight was a long fling in the making, but an all too short fling for us. I take comfort that we still have the bands in their respective separate entities, neither of which are strangers to playing Brighton, so I am sure we will see them back soon. And of course we do have the album ‘Long Fling’ released on the 13th October to cherish the memories forever.
Long Fling:
Pip Blom – vocals & keys
Willem Smit – vocals & guitar
Sal Rubinstein – drums
Darek Mercks – bass & Novation
Tender Blom – guitar
Long Fling setlist:
‘Pig’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Mouse House’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Waste Line’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘I Never Get Lonesome’ (Arthur Russell cover)
‘Weird Peace’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Flung’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Kiss Me By Candlelight’ (A Pip Blom & Personal Trainer song from Pip Blom’s ‘Bobbie’ album)
‘For Someone’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Tossed’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Wicked Game’ (Chris Isaak cover)
‘Peter Dickens’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Cool Bottle Water Park’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
‘Shoes’ (from 2025 ‘Long Fling’ album)
Kicking off this evening’s sonic adventure is Solid Pleasure. I had struggled to find anything out there about the band in advance of the evening, so this was going to be all new for me. Their Bandcamp page describes them as “A synth pop duo made up of Neave Merrick and Lucy Milani. The project blends mutant disco, Italo body music and no wave: all genres that sound tracked Neave’s somewhat solitary teenage years on the Isle of Wight”. Now this sounds all very interesting, as did the sight of their stage set up with an array of lovely looking electronics. Neave on vocals had a Roland Ju-06A Sound Module and a voice effect unit of some sort that I could not quite see. Whilst Lucy had quite the range of tech, a Roland Touch Bass TB-3, a Behringer MODEL D Authentic Analog Synthesizer, a Roland TR-8 – Rhythm Performer along with an Apple Laptop.
At 8:30pm both Neave & Lucy made their way to stage cutting quite the look, Neave in black leather trousers and black leather jacket wearing a pair of shades. Lucy in a black leather trousers and top which looked like a cat suit incorporating gloves, she also had donned big oversize shades so coupled with her blond 60s’esq bob haircut she could have been from a Sci-Fi space show.
So they have the look, they have the set up! What about the music? I hear you say. Well, the music was very good indeed, totally not what I had been expecting as a support for Long Fling. Here we had an excellent seven song, 30 minute set of electronic bliss. A couple of the songs in the set such as ‘Hellmouth’ and ‘Horror Wave’ were more instrumental, a full on cacophony of electronic beats from Lucy and overlaying voice effects from Neave, which had him busy fiddling and twiddling away on his set up, overlaying his voice, giving it a very computer like effect, all glitchy and very cool. The later song had Neave telling the crowd “We want to see you dance to this one!”.
For the other songs in the set Neave mostly was at the front of the stage on his microphone, but often moving back to tap buttons and twist knobs to alter his vocal sounds, his vocals had loads of echo and reverb throughout the set, so quite different from some of incarnations of the songs which are on their Bandcamp page. You had very up-tempo numbers such as ‘Lux Interior’ and ‘New York’, then the new single out only this week ‘Born To Be Mild’ a slower song, which saw Neave make his way out into the crowd.
Overall, all of the songs had that gorgeous 80s synth like feel to them and plenty of beats, this was a set that was going to keep you wide awake. Visually the pair of them were both captivating Lucy stationed behind her tech, sometimes fizzing and shaking, Neave weaving back and forth, neither relinquishing those shades. The set closed with a cover of the Smiths ‘Sweet And Tender Hooligan’, very different from the original as you can quite imagine with all the electronic beats, but excellent none the less.
Amazingly Neave told me it was only the second ever Solid Pleasure show, but it was the first he and Lucy had done together, as initially it was a solo project and now she’s a permanent member. So to perform tonight to a virtually sold out crowd is a great step on the path upwards, I am sure their music and act will evolve as time goes on, most definitely one to keep an eye on.
Solid Pleasure:
Neave Merrick – vocals
Lucy Milani – synths
Solid Pleasure setlist:
‘Hellmouth’ (unreleased)
‘Lux Interior’ (released September 2025)
‘New York’ (demo released in May 2025)
‘Born To Be Mild’ (new single out October 2025)
‘Bury Your Head’ (unreleased)
‘Horror Wave’ (unreleased)
‘Sweet And Tender Hooligan’ (Smiths Cover)
