All manner of monsters and strange otherworldliness inhabited Professor Elemental’s attic.
The chap-hop pioneer had decided to explore the weird and fantastical with his latest show – with audience participation at the very heart of nearly everything he did.
His inclusive elements ranged from the fairly standard idea of inviting a lady up from the audience so he could sing her a love song, to the genuinely original egg and spoon race carried out by both halves of the audience during the course of a rap.
The two most memorable songs in the set – I’ve Got A Horse and Owl Men – were stripped of any such extra frippery, allowing the strength of his comic songwriting to shine through.
His songs were generally based on vintage samples from 78 records and inhabited a strange fantasy world, where new wives could be constructed from scrap metal, and clowns represented all that is evil.
The only low point of the set was an over-extended shadow puppetry display by his monkey butler, which would have benefited from heavy editing.
Otherwise, Elemental provided a perfect late-night party for his sold-out audience – proving chap hop isn’t just a one-joke genre.
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