Few groups in history, recent or otherwise, elevate mood to such singular, smouldering supremacy as the Australian duo of musicians Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, aka HTRK (pronounced “Hate Rock”). Across nearly two decades of work their sound has shape-shifted between densities and intensities, noise and nakedness, but never wavered in its delicate poetic gravity. Theirs is a chemistry of smoke, echo, and the undertows of desire, the dislocation of cities and memory, the melancholy of distance, and deepening night. It’s music of solitude and sensuality, for small hours and lost weekends, spoken in an intimate shadowplay language of skeletal electronics, velvet vocals, and noir guitar. Emerging in the Berlin club scene with gristling dub techno rock hybrids, their sound gradually shifted towards more heady and dreamy vibes, as showcased on the heartrendingly beautiful album Rhinestones, released to much acclaim in 2021. For their first live performance in the Netherlands since 2009, HTRK transform their spectral torch songs into quiet storms of tension, texture, and transcendence.