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Chris Oakes of Strummer Room Records is fast becoming Banbury’s live music version of John Peel, working hard with a small team to promote a truly eclectic variety of artists at his monthly nights at Banbury’s funky Apothecary Tap. Tonight’s triple bill kicks off with mOrTiFi’D, featuring solo singer/ songwriter Morti fortified with direct drums and busy bass. Morti proclaims “I promised you f-ing weird and I intend to deliver!” and we get an assortment of cartoon punk pop stories touching on inflatable fruit, dinosaurs, aliens and D’n’D. It’s a melodic melange that climaxes with a tale about «Vacuum packed radioactive squirrels”; you should check out mOrTiFi’D for that reason alone. Baby Maker’s bio states they “cherry pick and prod at the carcass of influence”. Amidst a crescent of footpedals the solo figure does indeed seem to root matters in a lush backing track made from spare parts from the 90s, customising them with a speak-singing estuary delivery that’s embroidered with webs of live guitar. As with so much technology-driven collage-based music, it can be a challenge to balance the eclecticism of fingertipaccess-to-every-genre and makingsomething-truly-distinct when there are so many references in the mix. In this regard Baby Maker and headliner Analogue Electronic Whatever share similar starting points even if the end results are quite different. Despite a logo bearing three figures, Analogue Electronic Whatever are just a single fellow, looking like an electro version of John Hegley and referencing glam and Gerry Anderson in a James May shirt with plenty of Batman-style Zap!s and Pow!s. In fact, as he stomps back and forth enthusiastically in front of his video projections and tweaking a veritable starship enterprise-sized collection of gear, AEW manages to mash just about everything from the 50s onwards into a space-age hosepipe blast right into your face, ears and all the way beyond into someone else’s idea of the future. As with Baby Maker there’s plenty of it and it’s hard to pick out a distinct highlight, but that doesn’t mean either artist isn’t enjoyable; the crowd hops and bops for both and perhaps most importantly, at all times are only feet away from real life performers, giving their all for the sake of gigs in funky bars on small town Friday nights. Everyone here plays their part in making the event and if you stumbled across this sort of thing on holiday you’d never stop talking about it. Yet it may well regularly be happening not far from your own home if you take the time to look, so praise-be for small scenes! John Zap - Nightshift Magazine