Live Review: Dirt Plyground, Lost Cosmonaut, The Realm Of

Dirt Playground ensured an evening of amusement; entertainment and atmospheric, consciousness-expanding music was a profound element of the evening for those who spent theirs enjoying the *cough* vaudevillian escapades of The Realm Of, the all-encompassing, claustrophobic anathema of Lost Cosmonaut and the vilifying prowess of Dirt Playground.

The Realm Of incorporate a blend of experimental music and avant-garde performance poetry with some incognito character acting to create a confronting and compelling mode of expression, cantering back and forth from delightful and unnerving in their irreverent fits of wit and incoherent command of audio visual territory. The onstage execution of Sir Edward Cuntington III was the least violent prerogative included within the alternative means of entertainment.

Lost Cosmonaut were an impressive band streamlining for the entire duration of their set. Reverb-fuelled bass, gentle quelling vocals and picture-precise drumming lay the ground work for some carefully-catered shredding and punch-packed riffs that, when combined, encapsulated the vastness of space. The minute subtleties, such as rises in pitch, a tip in the tempo of a bass line or a bellow of existentialist woe evoked vivid imagery of a lone cosmonaut being propelled through the universe, softly gliding through a realm of infinite loneliness and despair. That’s not the say the music was entirely dark, but that the concept is extremely grand – Lost Cosmonaut!

Dirt Playground performed in their traditional vein, coming across as if they’d been doing this for decades. Each member of the band used the stage and their bodies to accentuate the music and create a storming sense of energy within the crowd. All well-imbued and strongly-versed musicians, the songwriting is a great lesson in contemporary psychedelic rock’n’roll at its finest. Just take, for instance, Staring Down The Barrel Of A Gun, which simultaneously alludes to Megadeth in the ‘80s while being sung by a woman who could probably floor Dave Mustaine in the year 2015.

Boasting their quintessential show, which adds an audio-visual projection as well as live percussion, the dimensionality of the music really became fleshed out, and seemed to give the members more confidence in performance – whether it’s Paraskevi jumping into the crowd, or Johnny preferring to solo with an empty bottle of Peroni and subsequently jumping onto the shoulders of a crowd member to fling musical sorcery at bassist Shivon, who had pre-empted the move and already done the same. Thus the double-decker bass guitar battle rounded out show closer Cosmic Expansion. I’m sure that next time the human tower will be triple-decker. Madness!