Late arvo in St Peters and the MoshPit Bar is already sweating – daylight bleeding through the open door, beer haze bending the edges. Gear stacked in corners, the smell of stale hops and hot amps. Everyone’s waiting for The Paul Kidney Japanese Experience to blow the room sideways. But first up, locals Rubber Necker.

Rubber Necker

Rubber Necker lit the fuse. The set started as a slow flicker – hesitant, brooding – before it caught like dry tinder. Within minutes, the place was burning. What began as a slow crawl turned full-blown inferno: faster, heavier, tighter, threatening to split at the seams. Renee Falez prowled the stage, face twisted, spitting vocals with the kind of pain that sounds exorcised, not performed. The songs weren’t tracks so much as threads – tangled, streaming, spilling into one another – minimal breaks. The crowd leaned in, lost track of time. By the end, the air was thick enough to chew.

Have a listen to their album Bad Behaviour

Paul Kidney Japanese Experience

Then came Paul Kidney Japanese Experience – a different kind of chaos. Paul Kidney and Don Drum team up with Japanese legend 𝗧𝗔𝗕𝗔𝗧𝗔 𝗠𝗜𝗧𝗦𝗨𝗥𝗨 (Boredoms / Zeni Geva / Acid Mothers Temple) and Tokyo wunderkind 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗔𝗠𝗜 𝗞𝗔𝗪𝗔𝗚𝗨𝗖𝗛𝗜 (New Rock Syndicate / Keiji Haino).

Where Rubber Necker burned, Kidney melted. All limbs and angles, he moved like a cartoon in collapse: tantric grimaces, guttural growls, every motion plugged straight into the subconscious. It wasn’t a set; it was a séance. One long, psychedelic crawl into something unstable and electric.

Kidney slithered offstage and into the crowd, crawling low, growling like a werewolf with a sense of humour. Somewhere in the mess, a clarinet (or maybe a kazbar) spat out some Eastern tones, circling over the band’s looping, trance-heavy groove. Guitar, bass, drums, drone – endless, hypnotic. The band held the floor steady while Kidney tore holes in reality, delivering personal growls to anyone brave enough to meet his eye.

It built to a crescendo of growls, howls and feedback that could’ve raised the dead or scared them back underground. Then, against the odds, an encore – rare, unhinged, perfect.

No one left sure if we’d witnessed a gig, a ritual, or a collective meltdown. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

Sample the crazy of Paul Kidney Japanese Experience here.