Strike Ses­sion with Adam Page is about halfway through its run at Down­stage. Strike is a long-stand­ing New Zea­l­and-based per­cus­sion group, and they’ve teamed up with Adelaide multi-instru­ment­al­ist Adam Page for this show. 

After the jump, kumaras, mirim­bas and old car parts.

Strike get to show­case the best of their tal­ents, using not just tra­di­tion­al per­cus­sion instru­ments, but bits of old cars, pipes and pans of water (mak­ing them pretty much apo­ca­lypse-proof).
 
They util­ised the full Down­stage per­form­ance space, using not just the stage, but vis­ible back­stage areas, bal­conies and cat­walks. Their per­form­ances flowed from space to space, each bring­ing a dif­fer­ent feel­ing to each piece.
 
By the way, some of Strike’s pieces are really moody and quite sexy and even romantic would be ideal to take your sweetie to see. Just say­in’.
 
There’s a real joy to a lot of Strike’s per­form­ances. There’s a lot of inter­ac­tion between the mem­bers, and it seems like they’re just hav­ing a great time up there.
 
Adam Page  joined Strike for a few num­bers, usu­ally join­ing in on his sax­o­phone. Even though Strike do get a lot of vari­ety from their per­cus­sion instru­ments, it was nice hav­ing the con­trast of nice fat sax in the mix.
 
The second half of the night was a show­case for Mr Page’s enter­tain­ment. He cre­ated a num­ber of impro­vised pieces using looped sounds with a loop ped­al. One of these pieces was based on a Cap­it­al Times review­er­’s descrip­tion of Strike mem­ber Stephanie Engel­brecht as a “pock­et rock­et”, so Page got the audi­ence to yell out “pock­et rock­et!” and gradu­ally layered bits of gui­tar and oth­er sounds to cre­ate a funk mas­ter­piece.
 
And there was the act that Page is fam­ous for – get­ting out a drill and turn­ing a tuber veget­able (in this case a kumara) into a wind instru­ment. It turns out the ol’ kumara is quite tune­ful, albeit messy.
 
The two-hour show was really enter­tain­ing, thrill­ing and joy­ful. You should see it.