nic mcgown and his thereminWell, this par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista thought the Synth Birds of Dawn soun­ded great.

Nic McGow­an and his two fel­low theremin play­ers waved their arms about half an hours worth of oth­er-worldy noise mak­ing early on Tues­day morn­ing, cre­at­ing sounds that at times soun­ded like the gib­bon cries heard from the zoo in New­town every morn­ing, to whale song, to plain old weird Dr Who fre­quency squiggles.

Nat­ur­ally, some people found the concept hard to come to grips with

For the first five minutes I thought it was a car alarm,” said Derwent St’s John Ped­er­sen. “I don’t see any art in it at all. It was just a wail, it did­n’t sound like birds, just weird wail­ing.

It did­n’t sound like birds! It was … dif­fer­ent! There­fore, I hate it! Jesus.

Anoth­er con­cert is due to take place tomor­row morn­ing (Thu 16 Feb), with the start time an hour later at 7:30am, to allow the likes of Mr Ped­er­sen to make the most of their “pre­cious rest”.