Brighton Fringe 2016
Low Down
A percussion duo create a show from junk creating a wall of sound, with banging beats and toe tapping treats using anything from plastic bags and cheese graters, to hoovers, saucepans and a giant homemade drum kit. Audience participation is a must!
Review
Drummers love drumming, they just can’t stop and kids like banging but they’re always told to stop so what could be more sensible than putting the two together with some highly tuned bits of old junk and create a whole new adventure in sound. Well not exactly new, we have Stomp to thank for the whole junk percussion explosion but there’s always room for more drummers and this duo have found themselves a niche and incidentally an economical set up, two people and, as they demonstrated at the beginning through the medium of film, a lot of junk.
They hit us from the beginning with a virtuoso performance on the mighty junk drumkit, with a dynamic demonstration of their technique and skills and the possibilities offered by random bits of metal and plastic. Buckets, bin lids, bins, graters, plastic bags, spoons, trays, even at one point hoovers, not entirely successful this one but that I think that was down to the vagaries of the electricity supply.
There was much to enjoy and certainly the audience joined in with enthusiasm, as together with the aid of a multitude of plastic bottles, saucepans and cans we created a pulsating wall of sound to fill the august space of St Andrews church. There was even a dance section as we zumba-ed between the wooden pews.
Everything that could be hit was hit, hats, heads, office desks and colanders, hit with joy, the junk was the joy and the joy was in the junk. I think there is more to be said about the process of collecting and selecting the junk but then I wasn’t the average audience.
This is a great show for kids who want to make some noise and it worked set as it was halfway between a workshop and a performance, with some glow drumsticks making an intriguing appearance at one point and suggesting the work of other percussion companies such as Sparks who use LED lights to great effect. But enough of them and other such troupes, this was a Bang On performance, complete with T shirts, hard hats and infectious enthusiasm, what’s not to like. It’s a show with two drummers drumming, tapping, beating hitting, banging on and on and creating rocking rhythms from recycled rubbish, ably demonstrating the joy of junk.