Night at the Circus

There are gigs and there are gigs, this “Night at the Circus” being one of the latter. The programme for the night affirmatively disregards all conventions for an evening of music, nay, this is meant to be an evening of entertainment. Part variety show, part circus, part D.I.Y. punk gig, it’s a confusing array of spectacles, but a valiant attempt to reconstruct and redefine the way we experience our nights out. We are handed out a menu of acts, the effective headliners play in the centre of the night as the ‘main course’, people have dressed up, the venue is decked out in red velvet, smoke machines, chairs, tables, balloons tied to every available banister.

Loxodonta begins to unravel his glacial threads of electronica. Not much of a spectacle, one man engrossed in his KORG, synthesising each calculated hum, hiss and drone, but people are still arriving through the doors, and it serves as otherworldly entrance music. A short set leaves questions unanswered as to how far into his potential scope Loxodonta is prepared to travel, but tonight’s apertif suggests music for the mind rather than for the brain, and a blissfully un-analytical approach to electronic music. About change on the stage, and we hear the darkly engrossing poems of Claire Williamson, metaphor soaked tales of dysfunctional family life and bittersweet memories of lost relatives. Francois is screening an animation drawn himself, whilst playing the soundtrack with a Casio keyboard balanced on his lap. “Winter Dam” is just minutes long, but intense – pencil drawing’s of pretty-faced romance that morph in and out of recognisable form as fast as the eye can keep up. It’s like nineteen-twenties silent cinema in etch-a-sketch form, with slightly wonky lyrical piano soundtrack.

Clayton Blizzard is from Bristol and very proud of it. He sings in his own voice; has songs about singing in his own voice; raps about rapping in his own voice; his own voice is inflected in that west country slur that seems to (often wrongly) infer some mental incapacity, but this man is plainly quite sharp. Somewhere between the political and societal comment of Chris T-T, the pop heart and white-boy hip-hop of MC Lars, and the questionable humour of Goldie Lookin’ Chain (but without any ego, he’s quite self-deprecating.) Would it catch on outside of the county? I don’t know, but I can’t help appreciating it more for being able to hear songs about _my_ childhood haunts, hanging out, watching the sun set on the river Severn behind the nuclear power station.

The V.Cs are imported from Wigan for the occasion. They play surf rock for the alien invasion b-movie and space fighter generation. Not only do they sound like sci-fi surf rock, they look it too – singer Vocoder Joe seems about eight foot tall and wears blacked-out goggles to complete his geek super-hero look, Keyop-503 treats his theremin with apparent religious fervour, eyes closed he is feeling each zap-ray wail. Fembot-S4FF, movie heroine in glitter-ball dress, is the bassist making these thundering Devo meets Hello Cuca songs so danceable, along with Specimen-11010 pummelling the drums, his sweat making his black face-paint run down his cheeks. There aren’t melodies as such, but wildly insistent repetition of phrases that bring to mind a more English Polysics.

Main course over, Keda Breeze is a burlesque act who appears, dressed only in balloons, which are popped in time to a nineteen fifties jazz-band accompaniment. It’s short and sweet, semi-suggestive and couldn’t be a bigger contrast to what follows: the point of Hacksaw is that they are really not very good. Over forty but still sporting Black Flag t-shirts, vehemently DIY but more parts comedy act than serious punk band. The appropriate finale is the ‘Bogroll’ song, where the audience are handed toilet rolls, and enticed into ripping off sheets and throwing them straight back at the completely deliberately rubbish and peurile band. The venue is decked out in red velvet, balloons tied to every banister, and pink toilet roll strewn across the whole room like punk-rock spider webs.