START-TRACK AT SHOW: Sara Wolff + Dominie Hooper + Flo Lines @ The Shacklewell Arms – August 17, 2025

Lost Map Records has been releasing independent music for 12 years now. Based on the tiny Scottish Isle of Eigg and led by the pioneering and eccentric Johnny Lynch (who also releases music under the name Pictish Trail), they put out audacious, adventurous, sometimes downright bizarre art.

Today is not that. Today is a selection of extremely reliable and consistent artists whose music is easy to appreciate, in an environment that suits them down to the ground.

The Shacklewell Arms is one of those famous London pub venues that always has something interesting going on, yet somehow, despite doing this for about two and a half decades, we have never visited before. Part of the Label Mates Festival, tonight is a low-key (mostly) acoustic showcase of three of Lost Map’s finest songwriters, and the welcoming environment of the intimate Dalston pub is a match made in heaven.

Tonight, the evening is opened by Sara Wolff, who has come all the way down from Liverpool for the performance. Accompanied only by her parlour guitar, she provides a stark contrast to the sound of Sonic Youth that precedes her set.

Her opening song is a delicate, sombre lament about “good things”. It’s an introspective, pared-back piece that commands your attention. The line about how the aforementioned good things happen to those we hate cuts particularly deep. She shines bright under the purple lights, and we imagine that she has set the tone – as well as the bar – for the rest of the night, in record time.

The second song is her most recent single, entitled Lost In Your Neighbourhood, and it continues largely in the same vein. Tender, pensive and beautifully poised, she sings about space as, ironically, the room fills up and the vacant footage decreases. The song’s hypnotic coda of “lost in your neighbourhood” has us transfixed and appears to have had the same effect on the rest of the audience.

Up next, after some tuning adjustments, is Don’t Feed The Birds which feels almost haunting. The already muted and reverential audience seems borderline petrified during the performance of this song – a Medusa-esque effect bewitches all those within a 30-foot radius.

Homesick is up next, a song about her hometown of Bergen in Norway. It’s a touching tribute. She mentions how “sometimes I just miss your smell”, and it reminds us of our own formative years spent in places we used to know and love but that are now much less familiar. The arpeggiated chords work wonders as the background to her fragile voice and diaphanous delivery. Sara’s Norwegian accent permeates everything she lends her dulcet tones to and adds a charming lean to her stories of self-doubt, observational analysis and weary wisdom.

The next song is a meditative, almost-raga-like piece that feels like it’s being delivered by a Nordic Nick Drake. The rhythm she plays with her thumb whilst playing the higher notes with her fingers complements each other perfectly and works symbiotically to create something that feels alive and urgent, delicate but hardy.

Next, she plays a brand new song – written this week – “as a test”. It’s called If You Say Too Much and it’s as charming as anything that has been played before it. It’s a gentle song with minimal acoustic backing in the verses that allows her voice to really sparkle. The chorus has a quietly catchy sing-along quality to it – as many of her songs have had tonight, actually. This leads us to the penultimate song from her set – Black Smoke. She asks the audience to gently pat their thighs, which they dutifully do. They serve as the percussion for the tune, which, as per Don’t Feed The Birds – feels almost spooky or medieval. You feel like it could’ve soundtracked a particularly tense scene in Game of Thrones. Not a big bloody one. But maybe one where there’s a plot or a plan being executed – one steeped in stealthy betrayal and wily wickedness. She mentioned earlier in her set that she is normally accompanied by a bit more than an acoustic guitar. You can imagine this thigh tapping coming from a machine, and it is working very well. As yet, there doesn’t seem to be a studio version of this one, but we will anxiously look forward to its release. We think it would also be very interesting to see her live with her full bells and whistles set-up.

The last song is an old one called Polystyrene. She closes her set the way it began. Hushed, nuanced and carefully considered. She finishes, and it feels like the audience collectively remembers that they need to breathe again – such was the respect that her songs have been afforded.

Devon-born Dominie Hooper and her electric Gretsch guitar are up next. She immediately strikes us as a very different prospect from Sara Wolff. Today she will mostly be performing songs from her forthcoming album – In This Body Lives (due out on Halloween via Lost Map) – but before she does so, she wants to set the scene. She asks the audience to close their eyes and imagine the large, low, leafy, loamy landscapes of Dartmoor. She paints a vivid picture as she describes, in depth, a scene from her hometown that results in a surprise encounter with a sheep in the dark, which forces the room to chortle. It’s an unexpected precursor to the drama that follows.

The first song begins with a subtle feedback drone which she – eventually – begins to play over. Sounding like a scene from a Western or a Horror (but set in Devon, obvs), she plays individual notes and expertly builds tension, all with very little. She adds percussion via her palm on the body of the semi-acoustic, and eventually her vocal comes in. It’s an almighty roar that feels almost ritualistic and brings to mind the vocal power and prowess of the equally potent Anna Calvi. There are no lyrics, just a strong, earnest battle cry.

The pitch of the feedback shifts, and what we assume is the second song seamlessly begins. Sounding a bit like Lankum vocalist Radie Peat, she expertly pairs her formidable voice with a soupy, warbly guitar tone. The resulting song ends up feeling a bit like a balm despite lyrics like “remember when I gave you your first black eye and you gave me mine”. Her voice fluctuates throughout the song and goes impressively from 0 to 100 incredibly quickly. We find out the preceding song was called Hurricane (it’s about her and her brother “growing up in the countryside, getting into japes”) and it’s her second single released on the Lost Map label.

The next song – Weaver – is purportedly a bit more cheery (although we won’t necessarily realise that, we’re told). It’s about a prior short-term relationship. She’s right – it doesn’t feel particularly cheery – but the rhythm and slightly increased tempo are a bit jauntier than any we’ve met so far. It concludes with the sound of an audience member’s drink being spilt, and the enraptured rabble bursts into hysterics.

After this, we’re told the next song is going to “bring the tone right down”. It’s about a friend of hers who died, and the last time she saw him was in here. She warns us she might cry. The song is Soft Reckoning, and his name was Rob Stroud. It’s as touching as it sounds. It’s a tender tribute made up of things that are significant (“when we buried the hatchet and you hugged me properly, tight and alive”) and things that seemingly – at the time – weren’t (like trees and the weather). Both things made it into the song, however. It’s funny, the things that we remember. “Hold on to your friends”, she sings in the outro, and it’s the most understated she’s been all night, despite the weight of the subject matter. You can hear members of the audience breathe, and the wood in the bar stools at the back of the room creak. It’s startling stuff.

The next track is entitled Fiction and is a song about someone who was “texting her loads and she couldn’t figure out if the person messaging her was married or not”. Rather than ask and find out, she stressed out about it, saved up some money and recorded an album. She has no regrets. The song is a swirling, building, beast of a tune – we imagine the studio version will be rather impressive when the album is unveiled in October. Again, her vocals are massive, and the combination of that and her minimal, raw guitar recalls some of the work of PJ Harvey.

For the next, and final, song, she abandons her guitar and replaces it with a cello. The song is No Name and is a rhythmic piece built around a minimal repetitive pattern. When it does change, however, it does so significantly with the newly introduced bassier notes, feeling like they could put a hole in the floor. Her vocals on this one sound – at times – a bit like Kate Bush; we imagine her brave, bold, stylistic choices have been a big influence on Dominie. As the song concludes, it becomes increasingly epic and cinematic-sounding. There is a confidence and a conviction here that is absolutely palpable.

This was a stripped-back solo set from Dominie and served as an extremely promising taster of the forthcoming record. She has an album launch gig at The Moth Club in November with a full band. We’re sure that will be well worth seeing.

The night was ended by the wonderful Flo Lines, whom we have had the pleasure of listening to live in person before.

The combination of her traditional-sounding folk incantations paired with her classical acoustic guitar, field recordings and found sounds (provided by her trusty MacBook) makes for a rather special experience. With a poetic, passionate, patchwork approach to songwriting, today she is accompanied on electric guitar by multi-instrumentalist Jack Frankland.

After a brief introduction, the first song begins in a whisper. The sound of spectres at play forms the backdrop to Flo’s folky melody. Jack’s guitar is tastefully subdued and adds a subtle but pivotal layer to the sound. “I am the cold water coming in – brace yourself”, she sings repeatedly, and as the chords ascend and the song reaches its apex, the background sounds create an ambient atmosphere. It feels like you’ve been on a journey, a journey outside, anywhere but here.

The sonic soundscape segues into the next song, The Tension Of Opposites. All of a sudden, it becomes apparent that the music is being accompanied by what sounds like gently crashing waves. The song grows organically. On this track, Jack isn’t playing, but it feels somehow bigger than the first. Flo’s songs are poetry – made not only of words but also sound. “The river will fall into the sea”, she sings, and the music feels as organic as anything in the natural world. There’s already a recurring theme here – the sense of connection to, and affiliation with, nature.

She replaces her classical guitar with a semi-acoustic one for her third song, and her sound is elevated once more. The addition of reverb to this electrified instrument is not necessarily better, but definitely different and is a pleasant point of difference. “I am the wave, I am the shore / we drift into a sea of storms”, she sings, and there it is again. The kinship with the world around us – something we all could probably – no, definitely – do well to focus more on in this day and age. If you’re familiar with Flo’s photography, then this obvious fascination with nature will not come as a surprise. She often dwells on things like landscapes and vistas as well as focusing on plants and flowers, and her music, you feel, is quite obviously an extension of those ecological interests. Jack is back on this one and bigger and bolder than he has been so far. With the gain slightly increased, his slow, echoey strums complement Flo’s cyclical meditations perfectly. They are building worlds around us in real time.

The next song – most recent single Funny Weather – begins with a loop that she has fondly nicknamed “the dying computer loop”. Flo tells us that this song is the closest she has to a “bop”. It’s a spiralling acoustic piece centred around the aforementioned loop. It’s hypnotic and enthralling, and she has the audience in the palm of her hand.

Up next is a special song to Flo called Choices. She tells us that the recording that she pairs it with is very meaningful to her and that sentimental significance comes across in her performance. The stormy backing provides a sense of tempestuousness which feels distinctly at odds with the barely-there instrumentation that begins the song. Her voice is as lovely as it’s been all evening and – feeling a bit like Laura Marling – is somewhat of a delicious cherry on top of a cake made of ethereal melody and terrific tone.

For the last song, she is rejoined by Jack, who has been absent for the last two. He adds texture and feeling to the song – according to Flo – and we can’t disagree. He plays his electric guitar upright with a bow, and the sounds ultimately created are vivid, vast and luscious. He creates a soft feedback drone and plays over it with minimal parts, slowly piecing together a mosaic of sound for Flo to sing over. Rather fittingly, the song seems to blossom and bloom before our eyes. As the set concludes, we’re already thinking about the next time we might get to do it again.

Excitingly, Flo is currently working on a score with collaborator Arthur Davies-Evitt for a forthcoming film. The film in question is Laundromat – Jonathas Nazareth’s debut directorial short and is about American immigration, friendship and much more.

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Written by Kinda Grizzly