The legendary Trash City, a freakish celebration of art, performance, music, pinball and robotic mayhem comes to The Roundhouse this April.
“An intergalactic red-light district where space pirates, bootleggers, illegal aliens and all the scum of the universe can come to party the night away…” This explains why I’ve never come across Trash City then, the genre and definition-transcending phenomenon that has gripped Glastonbury’s permissive pastures with its astounding concoction of arts, theatre, music and robot revelry since 2007. This April, Trash City comes crashing into town for a four-night stint at the Roundhouse.
Featuring the satanic spawn of hybrid, extra-terrestrial automatons, the backdrop of this intensely interactive theatrical experience – an “apocalyptic red-light district, straight from the pages of a 2000AD comic” – is what can only be described as hellish. Fire-breathing animatronics robots and Robot Wars-esque vehicles mark out their territory amidst a giant human pinball table, a replica of the Titty-Twister vampire bar from Dusk ‘Til Dawn and the first ever travelling gay disco. Anyone interested yet?
The whole shebang is the result of a collaboration of some of the most innovative and darkly-twisted minds of the UK creative underground. Industrial artistic works, motorised scrap vehicles, and miscreant-inspired urban creatures – the industrious work of notorious party collective Mutoid Waste Co. – give the bedlam a suitably trippy, nightmarish edge. Their latest mutated creation, The Juke Joint, is a seismic pinball table/music venue. Unveiled at Glastonbury 2009, it'll be on hand to catapult any willing members of the audience through a myriad of mind-bending worlds. A show-stopping, gigantic light-up scoreboard which reveals a robot band quartet together with a chorus of 30ft animatronic puppets when the score climbs to its highest peak completes the weirdness.
The next pitstop on this subcultural freakish fest is The Dragstrip. It's an architectural mish-mash of Aztec temple and biker bar, that will play host to some of the most outrageous bands on the planet together with the hottest DJs from the UK underground. There's also a nightly aerial vampire show and burlesque spectacular directed by Ruby Blue, with many renowned cabaret acts like Jonny Woo, Le Gateaux Chocolat, Empress Stah and Ryan Styles.
Set design will be in the capable hands of the NYC Downlow, the guys behind the world’s first travelling gay disco. Their replica of a bombed-out New York tenement solicited by a bevvie of drag queens and muscle-ripped men earned it notoriety and the accolade of the ‘Venue of 2007’. A late-night after-party with DJs from Horse Meat Disco brings things to a climactic end.
It sounds strange – darkly, deeply strange. It’s left even me lost for words. But for all its oddball eccentricity it all looks set to be a pretty outrageously wild night out. So for all you thrill-seekers, or the insatiably curious out there, get down to Trash City. Robots, human pinballs, music, performance and sculptures from an episode of Scrapheap Challenge gone wrong – this really is where it’s at.
Trash City is on at The Roundhouse from 7th-10th April.
Images courtesy of Trash City Facebook group.
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