Ash & I were oot the other night in the west end, meeting some of the people from her degree course. After a pint in Nice n Sleazy we were persuaded to head over to the Halt Bar on Woodlands Road.

What an odd night.

We fought our way through to the hoaching bar (I really mean it; I’m pretty sure there were a few emaciated hipsters lying suffocated underfoot, their skintight American Apparel drainpipes fatally restricting their ability to force their way out for a skinny cigarette and leaving them forlorn and forgotten on the sticky floor), bought a couple of drinks and jealously protected them from wayward elbows on the way to the gig room on the far side. We found Ash’s protété and occasional nemesis Rose and some of her friends and settled in to blether for a while.

I let my attention wander to the stage, and watched a few guys set up some random bits of electronic music gear—synths, laptops, that sort of thing—on a table covered by an old sheet or a curtain. The place was getting busier by the minute, and then, without warning, the conversational hubbub was blasted into silence by a long, squelching bass note.

Behind the table stood a young guy with shoulder length hair and a bandanna tied loosely round his neck. He was skinny and dressed in black (“He looked a bit like me when I was 18 or 19,” I told Jeff later, “only with long hair. In fact, just imagine me exactly as I was when I was 18 or 19”) and fiddled alternately with the laptop and the attached synth to generate a juddering wave of atonal, arrhythmic drum & bass of such filthiness that it was practically felching in front of us.

Occasionally, when the laptop could be trusted to continue the music without his supervision, he threw some crazy shapes for the audience. The front row, bizarrely and uniformly sporting foppish, asymmetrical blond hairstyles recalling the Hitler Youth, enthusiastically returned the favour.

The spectacle continued for about an hour, and ended with our young host naked from the waist up, arms stretched wide and bandanna over his face like a Nazi-Jesus dub revolutionary.

I leaned towards Ash: “I quite enjoyed that, actually.”

A DJ—only a DJ! How quickly a mere hour of live (if demanding) sequencing spoils you—came on after a while and the audience drifted into little pockets in the fog of dry ice. The place heated up slowly in the manner of boiling a frog, and I was coated in an even film of dirty sweat when we made our excuses about 1am and wandered off up Woodlands Road to find a taxi. We stopped for a crêpe at the van by the petrol station, where our crêpe vendor was a talkative dental student. “If I could give you one piece of dental hygiene advice,” he told us, unprompted, “it would be ‘spit but don’t rinse’.”

We perched on the bench in nearby bus stop, burning our tongues as we stuffed our faces and watching for likely taxis. We piled in when one finally stopped for us and headed home.

What an odd night, and yet a good one.

* * *

Other news: Charlie & Penny have a baby daughter! Annabel is healthy, cute and freakish is that way that babies generally are. Congratulations, guys!

Also, Tales of the Undetected suddenly popped up again in Google Reader the other day. I read a few of the most recent entries and found myself laughing out loud. Have a read!