February 2026
The Rossi Bar

Em— (Em-Dash, a typographic joke in case you’re interested) is the first act on this evening, stepping up at the last minute. June’s setup is a laptop and a flight case chock full of hardware. Starting with eerie long tones and a turned bass drum. And where the snare should be a metal rattle. A creeping bass line joins along with hi-hats and an actual rattle-y snare that slips around the beat. A little descending melody with hints of origins back in the radiophonic workshop chimes in, the beat slips out of kilter, and sounds start to mutate. Hell, everything starts to mutate into the slinky, stalking lurch of Tom Waits’ drunken uncle. A chopped voice is discernible, but not understandable. A chipper woodblock pattern trips in speeding things up, the drums distort behind it. June starts chopping around with the woodblocks, adding a squelch then dropping them out. This continues then the woodblocks seem to come back as a different squelch, the beat picks up, voices are being made to do alien things. Interlocking rhythms sourced from not your usual sounds wind away. Then drop into a new clap heavy lopsided beat. Punctuation provided by bells and laser hits. This is a solid groove, it seems to have one leg longer than the other but is insistent nonetheless. There is a sudden drop in tempo, space appears taking out most of the elements of the beat and then slowly replacing them with buzzing stammers, more squelchy bits, bass-y buzzes or booms. A shining melody line shimmers in over the top of the churning chaos. And so it continues, seemingly ill defined, mesmerising, shifting about, developing constantly. Rhythmically and sonically so inventive. Ending in a staccato frenzy of beats and short organ blips.

Next up was Rhubiqs with a setup of laptop, tablet and controller and a set that eschews the hyper-evolution of Em- in favour of apparent stasis. Starting with string synths slowly rotating in and out, these are joined with warbling tones. We sit there in this gently evolving wash of sound, there is a field recording of waves and the synths slow down to almost drone levels. The waves slowly die away and the tonal sounds fade in to replace the synths, it now feels like space music; earthrise over the moon, perhaps. Warm, though, and rich. There is birdsong and quiet rain. The string synths drift back in and a melodic refrain slowly emerges, then eventually thickens up into a nice rich drone. The details shift inside the drone and then it fades out to some mild glitching, to be replaced by looping more orchestral sounding strings. Slow piano notes drift over the top. There’s another hint of water in a field recorder trickling away in the background as we shift back into a new dronescape. A male choir indistinctly chants under the drone. A muted brass sound serenely provides another melodic intervention when the singing ends. Gently the stream fades up, and everything bar the melody drifts out of earshot. And then it’s just the melodic line. A beautiful calming filling to a fairly frenetic sandwich.

ChopChop, left to right, Ed (usually the drummer) is on the floor with lots of things, electronic and percussive, Al at the back, synth and cornet as usual, although he’s bought the MS1 out for a change, Eddie on bass and effects, and out front the irrepressible Xelis with vocals, trumpet and expressive dance. It’s a slightly different setup, shorter on monster groove than usual, but no less entertaining. It starts with Ed tapping a cymbal and Xelis gibbering and twitching. They build the intensity and a pulsing starts in. Ed starts a rhythm on the objects around him, the MS1 starts to warble, and Eddie starts some slow high bass notes, half a bassline. Xelis plays flurries on the trumpet. Everything drops down bar Xelis talking. Ed starts tapping out another rhythm, some processing makes then notes as well as hits, electronic stabbing noises envelop us. Xelis is dancing. It drops away again, to Xelis & squelches this time, then builds again. Ed is triggering occasional big noises. More space. “The butchers have gone mad”. Xelis is still in motion as everything around him stalls. The cornet comes in, bringing synth washes and the trumpet. Ed is at work on the electronics and Eddie furnishing occasional bass frills. Xelis throbs. Amazed. Al is back on the synth, Xelis takes up abstract singing again as we drift. Eddie has a bassline that slowly grabs our attention, and everything drops again. Xelis is guttural now, issuing commands, endless and contradictory. Someone starts up a synth rhythm. More synth lines join in. Xelis is twitching again. Cymbals come back in and a bassline starts, the percussion thickens, even though lacking a kick and the trumpet swirls. A synth is on a ramp in the background. The synth rhythm is relentless propelling Xelis into jerks. He is the last thing moving.