Extra-terrestrial joymongers – HENGE – have been delighting audiences in the UK and Europe since they landed on Planet Earth nine years ago. Their scintillating live performances earned them ‘Best Live Act’ at the Independent Festival Awards and they have since cemented their reputation with three acclaimed albums, numerous tours and regular main-stage festival appearances.

Their music escapes definition, but occupies a space between rave and prog rock that nobody knew existed. It is energetic, subversive and invigoratingly playful, jovially breaking new ground. Ultimately, these intrepid creatures are spreading a message of hope which leaves audiences feeling amused and uplifted in equal measures.

With Support from PADDY STEER

It’s a sometime cartoon-like music dense with events, new textures and the colours of children’s paintings, sounds like a Swiss cuckoo clock made of egg boxes and horsehair, glued together by an African Moog player in a Vietnamese iron monger’s shop.

Over 10 years I have witnessed Paddy Steer develop his alien avatar in the most difficult of nightclub and festival circumstances.

It’s a synthesiser show that is so far away from kling klang clinicalism and the haughty air of the modular meet.

On the surface it is a pound shop space program.

A one man Mercury capsule born of and attempting escape velocity from the derelict high street of Cash Converters, Maplins, abandoned antiques, yam, export & sari shops.

People are drawn in by Paddy’s glowing pantomime.

He could be a time traveller from a Victorian night garden with his gas powered calliope or a future Arkestra Brundle Fly with ten Hindu arms.

He’s out of time, out of place, quantum now and out of space!

Freeze one stacked second and see how many sounds and spaces are being juggled from the bearded brain in the bone case in the cardboard box with the battery watery eyes.

In performance after the false starts and furniture adjustments, without fail I‘ve seen the casual listener fall into Paddy’s magic tar pit.