Photos by Nathan Rifkin
Amid record low temperatures and blizzards across the nation, I was feeling fairly smug under the LA sun, photosynthesizing and enjoying a warm breeze as the rest of America shivered and shoveled snow off sidewalks. But as the warmth stretched from days into a few weeks, my joy turned stale and I wished, practically prayed for some bit of cold or clouds to give me reprieve from the sweat and scalding sun. As though they brought the very fog of London with them, my wish was granted the next day following Locust’s enigmatic performance at Westwood’s own Nimoy Theater, with a cool rain now pattering outside my window.
Locust is an electronic musical project founded by Mark van Hoen, which metamorphosed through the 90s from an IDM and industrial sound into its illustrious trip-hop style, marked by the album Morning Light in 1997, which remains their most popular. Despite the release of a handful of albums in the following decades, Locust’s last live show was in 1999 as the opener for Massive Attack, until their re-debut at LA electro-clash and shoegaze festival And Always Forever in November 2025 (it really killed me to miss this). Joining van Hoen is a new live band and LA-born musician Olive Kimoto, who brings a young and contemporary talent as both lead singer and keyboardist.
This was my first time attending a show at the Nimoy, and I felt particularly blessed that it was only a twenty minute walk from my apartment, having been accustomed to this city where concerts often necessitate a forty dollar Uber across town (and back again). With free tickets for students, owing to the hard work and generosity of the Student Committee for the Arts and UCLA Radio, it was truly one of the most accessible concert experiences I’ve had the chance to attend. In the crowd was a fine selection of friends, acquaintances, and faces that I’ve seen around at the many little backyard shows of my neighborhood, so I felt at home, though also scattered about were some quintessential 90s era old dudes who you could tell had been listening since Locust’s inception. Unlike my experience with Underworld at the Hollywood Palladium last year, where the crowd was majority Gen-X reformed ravers who now dress business casual for Born Slippy (Nuxx), Locust seemed ready to take on a new generation of fans, particularly evident by their adjacency to newer acts like Bassvictim and Evanora Unlimited at And Always Forever.
Among the opening performers was student artist Jules Francis, who, with guitar players Connor Gilbert and Henry Baskin, brought a sound reminiscent of Tatsuro Yamashita and a late 70s Joni-esque synth folk style. It was all smiles on stage and in the pit, and it was heartfelt to see the group of dedicated friends and fans peacefully swaying together. On next was Chloe Moser, delivering sweet acoustic folk songs that worked to capture the young sapphic zeitgeist. Lyrics focused on yearning and lost loves, and Moser brought an easy-going personality that lightened the mood, which was almost immediately crushed as Locust took the stage.
Locust began their set with a heavy-hitting tune featuring the foreboding vocals of rapper Griff Spex, leading immediately into the warbling guitar strums of Your Selfish Ways, from which Kimoto sings:
Stabbed in the heart, life’s falling apart
Never look back, but I don’t want to
Your selfish ways will catch up one day
Never look back
It felt as though no time at all passed between the present and 1997, with a timeless melancholy delivered via affective sounds that I would most closely compare to a shivering heart, and lyrics that still wrench the souls of young yearners. Behind Kimoto spun a possibly-just-for-aesthetic vintage tape player, both an unabashed artifact of its time and a reminder of the cyclical nature of heartbreak that survives across millennia. Surreal visuals of TV screens, flickering and stretched and distorted, played on the wall behind them, leaving strange patterns on the back of my eyes each time I blinked.
Following the performance of a handful of songs collected from both Morning Light and an unreleased project, I was then taken into the stars by a surprise cover of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game, in a dream-pop styled rendition that seemed like the closest thing I’d get to seeing the Cocteau Twins live. Shooting streaks of light projected on the huge screen turned the Nimoy into a spaceship en route to a distant nebula, and I was more than privileged to be among its crew.
For their performance of No One in the World, a more than perfect song for my Valentine’s Day playlist through its pure expression of love for a boy, Locust returned to their 90s tradition of playing matching video recordings of the songs they sample. Karen Carpenter, as the sampled vocalist, took to the screen in 60s era black-and-white footage, projecting her voice across centuries, landing in the here and now.
After the passing of an hour or so and a few more downtempo tunes, the night soon neared its end, and Locust had no intention of letting the audience leave in a sleepy state. For their last song, All Your Own Way, Locust projected pure energy onto the crowd, and the front of the pit turned into a dancefloor, a stark comparison to the nervous distance that separated the audience from the stage at the beginning of the set. I entered a sort of trance at this point as I closed my eyes and simply let my feet do as they pleased, and so badly did I wish that there could be one more song to follow (hopefully my personal favorite song by them, The Girl with the Fairytale Dream). The rest of the crowd concurred, as with the conclusion of Locust’s set, people began passionately chanting for an encore. I too thought it was a possibility; I mean, they left their laptop out on the stage! Alas, Locust did not return following their final bow, and the house lights landed the spaceship Nimoy back firmly on Earth.
Having heard the unreleased tracks created in the new collaboration between van Hoen and Kimoto, I’m beyond excited for their future releases and to see where the new rendition of this iconic project goes, and maybe see them again around town. My head still swims among the stars after being launched into space by Locust’s powerful performance, and their sound still lingers in my mind like a soundtrack for this past week.
