This summer we had the great pleasure of meeting Sxip Shirey. Sxip is a performer, composer and sonic experimenter of some renown. He recently produced an album titled Sonic New York, and is currently gigging in the UK -you can find more on him and his workhere

In this little clip you get an ad-hoc taste of Sxip and Slade jamming by the kitchen sink. Incidentally its also a good illustration of how the suits work - with appreciative noises by Ophelia Bitz.

You don’t visit Carnyville - it happens to you. At the edge of Bristol's dullest shopping precinct an occupied police station/ fire station/ court house and jail complex form the sides of a triangular courtyard. Stood in the centre watching the final preparations for the three night long escapade you can feel yourself being sucked into an alternate reality - for, with the Carnyville event, The Invisible Circus have made the thing that artists and performers get up for in the morning: they have created a coherent 'other-world', a circus of dreams. For the chance to be transported to a twisted, eerie and delightful place that feels like home a breathtaking array of talent and weirdness beats a path to the police station door. Aerialists, sideshow performers, magicians, musicians, pyrotechnic operatives, expert riggers, clowns, high wire walkers, fire spinners, freaks of nature - all turn out for the pleasure of seeing it happen. And pleasure creates a different kind of show - several million quid would not buy you something with the atmosphere of these artists volunteering their skills for an event they enjoy.  It is the triumph of something that present cynicism would have us disbelieve the existence of, and to perform there is to have your perceptions of what is possible gently rewritten through a haze of gin, paraffin smoke and silliness.

Sonic sideshow took out the old-faithful walkabout act - we strolled through the courtyard between the clowns and sideshows, recording the voices of whoever we met onto our bodies and playing silly tunes with them, sometimes letting the punters beat us with electric spoons, or wear our loud-speaker hats if the space got very noisy. 

 We also had international juggling pro David Bernbaum staying with us at the time, and had the pleasure of introducing him to Carnyville.  During a late night jam session Bernbaum resurrected his old juggling-as-percussion act, inspired by which Slade popped out the next morning, got some metal scouring pads and bits of wire, and did a quick modification of the suits so that juggling balls could trigger the samples.  You can see the results below. They're not bad for a hangover!