Tinlicker plays Emo’s Austin on September 30 — and for North American audiences, this is the first time the Dutch act has come through not as a DJ duo but as a live band. That distinction matters more than usual here. Producers Micha Heyboer and Jordi van Achthoven have been recording under the Tinlicker name since 2014, and after “Because You Move Me” crossed a billion streams in 2021, they left Anjunadeep for [PIAS] and started rethinking what a Tinlicker show could actually be. The answer arrived last October when British vocalist Hero Baldwin formally joined the project. Now there are three of them, and the North America 2026 run is their first tour in this format.
About Tinlicker
On record, Tinlicker has always leaned harder toward songs than most acts working in their corner of melodic techno and indie electronic. The production uses real instruments — strings, keys, horns — and sits in territory that listeners of Trentemøller and Moderat would recognize without much adjustment. The 2024 album Cold Enough For Snow brought in Brian Molko of Placebo and Tom Smith of the Editors as contributors, which tells you something about where they’ve positioned themselves at the seam between electronic music and indie rock. The new album, Dreams of the Machine (2025), is what this tour supports — and it’s the first record to feature Hero Baldwin throughout, adding a vocal center the duo format couldn’t fully sustain on its own.
They’ve played Coachella, Tomorrowland, and Creamfields, so festival-circuit credibility isn’t the issue. What isn’t documented yet — at least not in North America — is how this material lands in a room, in front of a crowd that can actually talk back.
About Emo’s Austin
Emo’s sits at 2015 E. Riverside Dr., south of the Colorado River, in its current form since 2011. The original venue opened in 1992 on Red River Street; the current location is a different animal — a 1,700-capacity room with the infrastructure to handle a production-level show. It books punk, hip-hop, pop, and electronic acts, and for Tinlicker’s purposes the room size reads right. This is a North American live debut, not a homecoming victory lap. Emo’s is a credible, correctly scaled call.
The Austin date falls in a three-night Texas run: Dallas at House of Blues the night before, Houston at House of Blues the night after.
Tickets
Doors open at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, September 30. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster. No support act has been announced at press time.