Sunday, September 29, 2019

Scaledown Is Mad

These are from Scaledown. Where else can you see a woman singing along to self-punched code run through a wind-up musical box and jumping with two feet on a gigantic plastic piano to accompany herself (Pettaluck), wild improvisation form double bass and sax (Martin Clarke and Otto Willberg), projecting tarot cards on to the ceiling (Blanca Regina), dressing as a monk with a speaker for a face and overcoming a technical hitch that involves pulling a jack lead through your habit and plugging it into your face (The Order of Limerant Monks), a poet whose private parts have appeared in a book of private parts (Carl Chamberlain), an utterly charming multilingual ukulele player who plays the instrument as well as an old blues guy might strum his axe (Rita Braga), and a final act who performs their set despite white noise emanating from a mixing desk manned by two drunken hosts (Papernut Cambridge)?
Scaledown. Unique, friendly, annoying, fantastic, entertaining, and always unpredictable.
This one, I nearly choked to death on my lime'n'soda when Mark asked the bass player of Papernut Cambridge to 'try his bass now' after a lot of knob twiddling on the desk, consulting Sean, muttering, quizzing, and taking another swig of red wine, trying to get a sound out of it.
'It's not plugged in', said the bass player, holding up the lead with the jack plug hanging from the end of it.










No comments: