After trawling Dalston for jazz bars like a cross between Howard Moon and Goldilocks, we eventually pull a Nicobobinus and find the Servant Jazz Quarters was under our collective nose the whole time, a tiny little East London hideaway with nothing outside to betray its bustling, quirky innards. With two hours to kill before the music starts, my friend and I invent a cocktail, drink six of them, go out and get Nigerian food, and after talking to the Caribbean door man for half an hour decide that we need to move to Trinidad because London is way too cold for this shit, so we’re more than ready to hear some good music.

Goodbye Leopold is three fems dressed like Technicolor space-age Red Indians. They begin their performance with some synchronised Tai Chi, which may have been for their own benefit; a silent audience looks on in puzzlement. The first song they sing, as they afterwards explain, is Shakespeare’s sonnet Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day set to music in three part harmony, sung backwards. Another is a Bengali folk song, and for one number they sing along to a cassette tape recording of a Nigerian village choir: all of these songs also have choreographed dancing. I don’t know when I’ve been more blown away by a performance anywhere, and to see it here in the basement of a tiny Dalston nightclub felt like finding buried treasure. Do not miss them if you can help it.

Perhaps Contraption bring along their own reptiles. Singer/ clarinettist Hannah has a chameleon perched on top of her head for most of the show, and they’ve got a snake somewhere as well, but the crazy thing is that’s not the best thing about their performance. Nor is it the fact that they have a drum kit in a pram, a sousaphone, a sax, a trombone, French horn and a flute. Unbelievably, after that litany of cool reasons to see this band, the best reason is actually their music. Self-described as “art marching band”, “avant-rock” and “deeply danceable wonky pop”, my preferred description is Anarcho-funk big band. It’s sort of like Sufjan Stevens got hold of a secondary school’s marching band, gave them all LSD and got them to dress up like they’re in Gormenghast: they play both their own infectiously wonky material and big band classics from Benny Goodman to the Jungle Book in the rampaging style, barely under the control of band leader and flautist Christo Squire. This is what live music should be: we dance from start to finish, sing along in raucous pub harmonies, it’s like we’re in a 1920’s speakeasy. If you see two bands this year, make the 'Contraption one of them, and don’t say 'perhaps'! 

All photos courtesy of the splendid Sahara Ezzie