Embedded Files
IN THE DARK - INTERVIEW & REVIEW
IN THE DARK - INTERVIEW & REVIEW
‘In the Dark’ strips live music back to its most vulnerable state. Expect no visuals, no performers to watch, just sound moving through a church in central London. So, what exactly happens when listening is all you’re left with?
Have you ever really listened to music? I mean properly listened in a way that deprives all your other senses so you can feel what sound is actually doing to you.
Naturally, being invited to ‘In the Dark’ came with a lot of curiosity and a little bit of apprehension. It’s an auditory experience in total darkness, hosted inside a church in central London.
We’ve been to 360 audio experiences before – Polygon London immediately comes to mind, who hosted their first experience in London in 2025. Here, immersion is achieved through state of the art technology and purpose built speaker systems, where the audience is placed into a ‘shell’ to experience audio in 360.
However, we’ve never experienced 360 sound that’s almost entirely acoustic. This means no post-production tricks or fixed arrays, but around 30 multi-instrumentalists quietly moving through the space, playing live, while all you have to do is sit back and listen.
'In the Dark' is exactly what it says on the tin. You enter St Andrew, Holborn, take a pew, and then the lights extinguish. What’s left are no phones, visual cues for performers, or spectacle to witness. Once the darkness settles, your ears experience the sound drift, swell, retreat, and reappear somewhere else entirely.
What makes this experience feel genuinely different is how the sound is created. Spatial and immersive audio is usually something that happens later, in post-production. Here, it’s built in real time. Musicians move while playing, carrying sound with them as they walk, which means the music never sits still. This also makes the experience slightly unpredictable – like the room itself is inhaling and exhaling – with no experience being uniform.
As we were being briefed on what to expect before the show, the shows curator, Andrea Cockerton, said that the experience has been referred to as ‘the Cirque du Soleil of sound’, which I think is a fitting description – minus the visual spectacle.
Andrea also explained that the project was conceptualised before COVID-19, but limited funding and logistics has meant that it’s only reaching audiences now. In part, this is because it’s no easy feat to put on this sort of show: the three-hour setup, the careful choreography of musicians and microphones, and the patience required to make something this delicate work well without falling into gimmick territory.
There’s also a clear desire to grow, with talk of one day hosting the experience in a dedicated space, possibly even their own church, designed specifically for this kind of listening.
The idea itself was inspired by restaurants like Dans le Noir that serve food in total darkness, where diners – more often than not – struggle to identify what they’re eating. Using a similar concept, Andrea wanted to explore that same disorientation with sound. What happens when recognition and visual cues disappear?
Without genres, faces, or expectations to latch onto, listening becomes all the more physical. In other words, you stop trying to name what you’re hearing and start noticing how it actually makes you feel.
What ‘In the Dark’ does beautifully is remove the observer’s paradox – that sense of being watched which influences the response of an individual. In the absence of light, there’s nothing to prove, allowing the audience to react honestly and without self-consciousness. It’s something we think about a lot at Nobody is Watching, and here it’s executed with real intention.
Whether this kind of experience could exist at festivals or larger-scale events is yet to be fully explored, but is an exciting prospect, as well as integrating other senses like smell or touch.
But in this setting, it works precisely because of its intimacy and restraint. It's an overall unique experience we'd encourage others to try.
We look forward to the ‘bright’ future ahead for ‘In the Dark’ and give thanks to The Everyday Agency for having us along!
All images by Ian Olsson & Alicethecamera
Google Sites
Report abuse