Yesterday's Little Atoms was really great. Tom Standage was fantastic, and the programme was a whirlwind tour through the history of humanity, via drink - full of interesting facts and quite a few laughs. Should be on the archive soon.

After the show tycho_b and I headed off to the pub, where we met up with skitster and his friend, Richard Thomas and James from Resonance FM. The conversion was wide ranging and interesting, and I was reminded of the discussion we'd just had on the show about people going to coffee shops to meet like minds and discuss...stuff.

Then, we went, via the chip shop, to Scaledown, where I was playing. I haven't been for a while, my position of co-presenter has been more than ably filled by Dan Whaley. The evening began with a somewhat shambolic version of "The Banks of Sweet Primroses" sung by a choir of Whaley, Braby, Mike Orchard and myself.

Next were a couple of pleasant chaps, one of home played a muted trumpet, the other played finger picking folk electric guitar and sang with a muted voice - a bit Nick Drake-ish. Self effacing to the point of near invisibility, they were the Scaledown ethos in a nutshell.

The Double Clutching Daddies were a kind of workplace supergroup - suitably cowboy-hatted they rambled through a few truck-driving C & W numbers...



Danny O'Brien wacked a single snare drum, Steve Pom sang (fairly unintelligably to my Limey ears), Mike Orchard played some lap steel that seemed to owe more to the psychedelic stylings of The Misunderstood than my idea of C&W, whilst Dan Whaley dropped in some terrific twangy guitar chops. They went down a storm.

In marked contrast the next band played free-improv - Fate of Animals (horrible name folks) featured two really good percussionists, a double-bassist in the Simon H Fell tradition of energy and numerous objects to bash the bass with, two guitarists (one excellent, the other a little too eager to use every trick in the free-improv guitarists armoury - calm down!) and a vocalist. It was actually really great to hear a bunch of younger improvisers who hadn't bought into the near-silence of recent fashionability, and there were some really great moments - the less interesting bits for me were the aforementioned guitarist's tricks, and when the singer attempted overtone singing - never a good idea, unless you can do it well, but on the whole really encouraging. The bafflement on the faces of some the audience was a delight too...



Blueelephant was next - (what is it with young people and terrible names) and was enchanting, Manuela Barczewski played simple, unfussy electric guitar and sang sweet melancholic songs, using chords that were inventive and plangently jazzy - I was completely won over, check out the tracks on her myspace page.



Next up was me, I played to half emptied room, which considering the volume of the piece was probably just as well. I did a very minmalist piece with sound emitting objects placed around the room to make a full drone, then I passed out a few simple blowy things to some of the audience and gave them instructions on when and how to play them, as the piece progressed I encouraged some of the audience to blow accross the tops of their beer bottles, then I joined in on melodeon. A few other audience members joined in by gently whistling, and one girl did the wineglass and wet finger trick. Was it a success? Up to others to decide I guess....

As the time ticked away, the room suddenly started filling up with people who looked like farmers from depression-era USA, I made a reckoning on getting the train and escaped. So I missed the last act.

I really must make the effort to go to more improv gigs though....