Sculpture/Alex Smoke & Florence To, Dome Studio Theatre, Brighton

It might sound hackneyed but Sculpture can only be described as truly psychedelic. They achieve this via a thoroughly original stage set-up. Dan Hayhurst, in a black tee-shirt and military cap, manipulates sounds on a laptop, with a rack of magnetic tape loops to his left which he carefully plucks up and sets on reels, but what makes the London duo a unique proposition is the zoetrope-style visuals of Reuben Sutherland.

Moustachioed and clad in an eye-watering multi-coloured poncho, long stripey socks and what appear to be plus-fours, he places cards of images on a vinyl turntable with a camera perched above it. The resulting spinning images are projected onto a giant screen behind the pair. He moves the turntable and cards around to create an astoundingly trippy barrage of visuals.

It's all about 'cross-artform collaboration' and 'boundary-breaking audio-visual works'

The effect is redolent of films by abstract animation pioneers such as Oscar Fischinger and Len Lye, artists whose chromesthesic work predated and predicted psychedelia (chromesthesia being the neurological association of sounds and colours). It also occasionally recalls the looping, jerky, frazzled style of early Hollywood cartoon shorts, such as Max Fleischer’s original Betty Boop cartoons. However, given we’re online and this is the 21^st Century, the best way to gauge the effect would be to click to the next page and check the video, which gives a small hint of Sculpture’s visual potency.

In truth the music is more an accompaniment than intriguing in its own right. It gloops, clunks and squelches, staying sternly away from 4/4 dancefloor obviousness, mostly sounding like Autechre in a particularly ascetic mood. Some of the audience sit cross-legged on the floor, most stand, but one woman in a gold jacket, beret and plaits freaks out, grooving with her arms as if she were at Woodstock. Shortly before they draw their performance to a close Sutherland introduces a note of humour to his madness, pushing a cut-out Simon Cowell into the proceedings. It gets laughs and when the duo leave the stage after their 50 minute set, they receive hearty applause.

Tonight’s concert is part of Brighton’s third annual Earsthetic Festival, a short season of events that are described by the people behind it as being “all about cross-artform collaboration” and showcasing “boundary-breaking audio-visual works”. After a fifteen minute break it’s the turn of Alex Smoke and Florence To to attempt these goals. The short of it is they should have been on first because their set does not have the entertainment value of Sculpture’s. I am familiar with Alex Smoke as the purveyor of fine techno, notably through the Scottish label Soma, but tonight is all about his audio-visual Wraetlic project with installation artist To. The pair sit side by side on laptops in front of a large screen displaying To’s linear black and white visuals. These generally recall swirling variations on the cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album. The music is orchestrated and musically richer than Sculpture’s but it has a stately, leaden pace, lacking dynamism. The audience thins out and becomes restless. It seems likely Smoke is deliberately staying away from the funky techno for which he’s known, but his half of the evening would have been greatly lifted by an injection of clubland bounce. Nonetheless, Earsthetic’s opening event was refreshingly offbeat and a welcome break from the norm.

Earsthetic 2015

Sunday 29 November: Elaine Michener – Industrialising Intimacy

Monday 30 November: The Tiger Lillies – Lulu: A Murder Ballad

Tuesday 1 December: Bianca Cassady and the C.i.A (new project from one half of CocoRosie)

Overleaf: Watch a video of Sculpture's "Rotary Picture Emitter' picture disc in action