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.