DJ Jonny G was manning the turntables with his usual flair, slowly filling the dancefloor with a mix of breaks that regular visitors to Ric's on Saturday nights have grown to know and love over the years. But as soon as On hit the stage the floor exploded, with punters seemingly dropping from the rafters to take up their position front and centre. On's first tune was quite simply one of the most amazing songs from a previously unfamiliar act I have ever heard - propelled by a simple hip hop/funk beat and impossibly heavy groove-laden bassline, enhanced by some handy scratching and high-velocity bongo work, and taken to another level again by an effects-laden flute solo that had me reaching for the inevitable Jethro Tull comparisons (and if there's a 70's prog-rock reference to be found, I'm not afraid to use it!) While the rest of the set didn't quite live up to the inspired opening number (a bit too much rapping for my liking), On certainly had the floor firing for the duration, with some of my crew even commenting that they outshone The Bird! Blasphemy!
	Ahh, The Bird. What can I say about these guys that hasn't already been said in these pages countless times already? (see Woodford Folk Festival and 4ZZZ Market Day) The anxious faithful on the dancefloor regaled each other with triumphant stories of Bird gigs past. The curious uninitiated looked on in wonder as one of the most odd-looking drum kits in existence - consisting of two snares, a collection of beaten-up cymbals, a gong, a 44-gallon drum posing as a floor tom and a chemical barrel converted into the sub-bass kick drum from hell - was assembled on the stage before them. And the shirtless giant next to me looked over midway throught the first acid-breakbeat onslaught and declared that "These guys rock my world!"
The Bird show what electronic music can be - not just a series of seemingly unconnected sounds held together by a booming bass drum sitting on the one mind-numbingly boring tempo, but a fluid medium that changes with each play, where brief song fragments can turn into sub-sonic sound explorations, where songs evolve with a nod of the head rather than the push of a button, where the band and audience feed off each other's energy in a perpetual loop, continually pushing each other to new levels of exhilaration. Although the absence of tabla genius Bobby Singh prevented them from reaching the transcendent heights of past performances, this didn't stop Ben and Simon turning the sold-out Zoo crowd into a seething mass of humanity with their custom blend of tribal percussion, jungle beats and magical space-trance Roland Juno synth lines. And with an album nearing completion, it's inevitable that they'll be doing the same for some time to come. ~Kris Swales~