I sometimes dread the question “who are you going to see tonight”. It’s usually some underground combo with an unpronounceable, clunky or unwieldy band name (as is the fashion these days) that I feel a bit apologetic about. No such problem with EarthBall – an excellent band name and one you can say with some relish, perhaps emphasising the word ‘Earth’ like Peter Wyngarde in the 1980 Flash Gordon movie “…The inhabitants refer to it as the planet..eeeuugghhrthh”.

However, I’ve been quite amused by the reaction when saying EarthBall will be peforming a free rock improvisation – cue horrified reactions from otherwise learned and cultured friends and acquaintances “that sounds hideous!”. I’m quite tickled by that. In 2026 it’s quite nice that there is anything musical that people would find quite so beyond the pale. Of course with the words ‘free’ and ‘improv’ everyone probably has different ideas of what that actually means. To some it could mean what the Americans call “Jam bands” – hours of fretwankery and muso showboating at Arena filling scale – more like a sporting event than a gig – an appalling idea that I’d also run a mile from. It could also mean just downright bad or just plain boring music -people bashing away aimlessly on some instruments to no particular end. But why would anyone do that?

Free improvisation though, to me at least implies that some thought, discipline, Art and downright nerves of steel is involved – to walk out on stage with (tonight) a five piece band with neither band nor audience knowing quite what is going to happen is quite something and has a different set of parameters to just a regular gig where there is a setlist . Of course we’re here because EarthBall have a reputation for being very good at this sort of thing – they’ve been on the front cover of The Wire magazine. The comedian Stewart Lee is a fan – (he was accidentally sampled on one of their recordings) and highly likely he would be here tonight if he wasn’t across town playing an outdoor gig in Castlefield Bowl. There are lots of recorded works so you get the general idea – we are here because we buy into the general idea of what Earthball are and we can expect it will probably get loud and visceral and exciting.

It’s incredibly refreshing in a way. Earthball have come over from Canada and file on amid the glitterball sparkles in the Kamera ballroom. They are a 5 piece tonight. Two guitars, sax player, bass, drums (with some percussion and keys and other things to bash if necessary and other brass instruments and things as required) – tonight as with every time they play it will be different, there’s no ‘bangers’ that everyone is expecting, no nostalgia, no instant gratification – they’re just going to start playing and see what happens. The nearest comparison I can make is The Necks – except they fall more into the Jazz area and require a high spec Grand Piano to be provided by the promoter.

It feels churlish to lift a phone and take a picture but I need one for the review – so I quickly take a few snaps and as you can see it’s grainy and blurry – proof that you can’t really capture what EarthBall are doing in the moment so best put your phone away and engage – which everyone does.

They start with a crash of drums and a guitar chord or two, but also with moments of silence. A secret weapon for any improv combo – leave a space where a conventional band wouldn’t dare – stare the audience out. The sax player eventually decides to fill the gap. There are vocals from two of the musicians – mostly speaking, intoning or occasionally bellowing whatever springs to mind – so this is very much about communication not just ‘playing’. Without wanting to resort to lazy comparisons – think Sonic Youth’s spoken word passages, or Throbbing Gristle when the Cornet and feedback guitar comes out. Things begin quite abstract and and just as I’m wondering if there will be much in the way of rhythm – suddenly the drummer does exactly that and it’s clear that comparisons others have made to Can and King Crimson are on point.

The set seems to move through 4 or 5 ‘pieces’ if you like – at one point settling into a very bass heavy almost gothic whirpool of a riff – and I swear at one point one of the guitarist has some sort of talkbox on his guitar – Peter Frampton-style but I can’t be sure. Which is a theme of the performance – you find yourself looking round the stage wondering who is making the various sounds – some familiar, some not. They slip into a vaguely conventional post-punk bass and guitar thing for a bit – and I like the fact that EarthBall can improvise something that sounds like a track of one of the early albums by The Cure as if that’s exactly what you’d expect them to do – before it all shatters again.

The set is just 45 minutes which seems to be their MO. It leaves us wanting more which is a smart move – going back to the general ‘fear of improv’ I like that there is a time frame to this – an exercise in brevity and self-editing and EarthBall never once sound indulgent or flabby – and 45 minutes is roughly the length of an album. Perfect. Look at it this way – every night they perform an album you’ll hear once, and never hear again. It might be really good too. This one was!

It made me think bands doing free improv should probably be more of a ‘thing’ on the regular gig circuit – rather than a niche . I will be at Manchester Psychfest this weekend and will mostly be listening to bands who are claiming to push at the boundaries and take us on some sort of freewheeling ‘trip’ – but all with a thoroughly rehearsed and tested setlist, aiming to please and sell some merch. There won’t be much genuinely free or improvised music, and outside of venues like Cafe Oto in London and tiny underground spaces this sort of thing is incredibly under the radar or hidden away – when it should be above and open for all – I’d certainly like more of “this sort of thing” and the full venue agrees. Hats off to promoters Alphaville and the Kamera venue for putting this on.