Snorkels

The London Snorkelling Team gig at the Vortex. This really is it. A meticulously playful quartet of Tom Haines, Chris Branch, Pascal Wyse and Ross Hughes doing 'music like they imagined happened in the 1950s', no other way to put it. Interplay with live overhead projector animation by the Perrett brothers - one track has an overhead of a band mixer, so each of the four goes up or down in volume, plus responding to effects buttons of Echo, Weird and Horse. Ed Gaughan emcees as if we are in a town hall on a small island somewhere in the 1950s, including a shipping forecast and a voodoo seance. Will Adamsdale ghosts as an existentially-challenged magician. Ed and Will are breathstealingly funny. Jonjo O'Neill leaps out of the audience to tap his way through a number.

Light entertainment like I can't imagine better. Give them the Morecambe & Wise slot.

I laughed hard, especially at Ed's introduction of a deadpan Ross as 'mute since childhood but although outwardly incommunicative I believe that he has a rich interior life'. (You may have to have been there). Which he told me afterwards was a quote from Pope Pius XIV describing St Francis of Assisi in his assessment towards the sainthood. That had just popped into his head after he read it years ago in research for a failed show. He's probably making it up but I don't care.

They were launching their album called Audio Recording and Map, because its track listing takes the form of a map made by the Perretts in glorious fold-out colour.

Get it. But get to them playing live.

Disclaimer
I know and have worked with a lot of them, but that is also because they are lovely and brilliant with equal integrity. Earpiece that Tom and I made last year also heavily featured the magnificent LST track The French Horse.