Revolutionary Arts Ensemble collected a wide variety of music boxes and re-interpreted each tune into different genres of song. Two concerts were performed, one at the Hawke's Bay Arts Festival, and the other at the newly opened Spaceship venue in Hastings. Both shows were an immersive multimedia experience of visual and aural stimulation.

Review of Hawke's Bay Arts Festival performance

Not since Pandora’s Box was opened, will you have heard such a bouffage of cacophony pour forth from this succulent septet of senescent soloists. Too much? Not even close. In order to make their journey to Mr Alighiere’s mystical wonderland infinitely more “do-able:, music was often added in the form of a small cylindrical rotating cactus. The Revolutionary Arts Ensemble has a particular fetish for the rotary, so it would seem perfect that our first arts festival show reflects this.
Come along and be mesmerised, sanctified, terrified, titillated, nostalgicated, thwarted and sorted! In every tune a guarenteed happy ending. Drums, bass, guitar, brass, woodwind, keyboards and drums. In addition: animations, puppets, grinning, tomfoolery and tea towels. Allegro, Andante and the often underatted Largo. As the women’s great uncle said: “I don’t know much about art, but I’m a qualified accountant!” Have a shower and get ready to shake your Mother’s inheritance. Don’t. Miss. This. Show. Sharon.

Personnel:
Anton Wuts – Saxophones/Flute/Keys/Vocals/Music Transcription.
Will Darbyshire - Trumpet/Vocals.
Vinnie Beaumont – Electric Guitar/505 Drum Machine.
Adrian Thornton – Electric Bass/Mini Organ/Stop Motion Animations.
William Devine – Organ/Synths/Samples.
Max Parkes – Drums/Percussion.
Joe Dobson – Drums/Percussion.
Greg Sims - Visual Projections.
-Extra performers-
Alicia Hunt - Burlesque
StellaGrace - Dancer
Rosheen FitzGerald - Burlesque
Joseph Disrose - Baritone Saxophone
Nate Simes - Trumpet
Christopher Wilson - Trumpet

Revolutionary Arts Ensemble journey the cosmos with the progenitor of afrofuturism...SUN RA!!! Recorded live at the Hastings Pipe Band Hall October 12 2019 as part of the Hastings Fringe Festival.

Bad day at the TAB? Aunty Melissa thinks you're a loser? Eating creamed rice for pudding, out of the TIN?! Well, why don't you leave earth? That's right: get the eff off terra firma! When flying with the Revolutionary Arts Ensemble you'll enjoy astounding-ly good company, amazing-ly seductive aural stimulation, and Fantastic-ly kung-phooey fare.

Join this adventurous troop of musicians: Captain Adrian Thornton (bass/ideology), Chief Navigator Willie Devine (MoogerFooger), Electrical Modulations Officer Vinnie Beaumont (string sextant), Lt. Commander Max Parkes & Lt. Commander Joe Dobson (nuclear fusionistas) and ship’s doctors Will Darbyshire & Anton Wuts (hornstars), as they take you on a ride through the omniverse of Sun Ra via the planets Mingus, Ayler and Coleman.

As the great Stephen Hawking once said, “BE CURIOUS”...

Personnel:
Anton Wuts – Saxophones/Music Transcription.
Will Darbyshire - Trumpet
Vinnie Beaumont – Electric Guitar.
Adrian Thornton – Electric Bass.
William Devine – Organ/Synths.
Max Parkes – Drums/Percussion.
Joe Dobson – Drums/Percussion.
Greg Sims - Visual Projections.

The Ensemble perform an all original set inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s surreal masterpiece ‘Garden Of Earthly Delights’.

Personnel:
Anton Wuts – Saxophones/Drums.
Vinnie Beaumont – Electric Guitar.
Adrian Thornton – Electric Bass/Animations.
William Devine – Organ/Samples.
Max Parkes – Drums/Percussion.
Joe Dobson – Drums/Percussion.

For this project the Ensemble take 1960's free+jazz tunes by such artists as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, and speed it all up, give it a punk rock spin, two drum-kits, bass, vintage Lowrey organs, guitars, enough brass, and you have Hastings’ East-block-brewed Jazz Kung Fu.

Personnel:
Anton Wuts – Saxophones/Music Transcription.
Rosie Langabeer – Trombone.
Vinnie Beaumont – Electric Guitar.
Adrian Thornton – Electric Bass.
William Devine – Organ/Synths.
Max Parkes – Drums/Percussion.
Joe Dobson – Drums/Percussion.

The Monster Music project is a tribute to the music of Akira Ifukube and the Kaiju movies of the Toho Film Company, from 1954-1995.  For this project, the Ensemble play the tunes of Akira Ifukube who wrote most of the scores for the Toho Monster movies from the original 1954 Godzilla directed by Ishirō Honda to the 1993 Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II.  We use 8 minute Super 8mm silent Toho film reels, in which we adapt Akira’s tunes to fit where we think they fit, and off we go….

Akira Ifukube 1914-2006.
Legend has it that at the age of 14 Akira decided to become a composer after hearing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. His first musical break came in 1935 when his Orchestral piece Japanese Rhapsody won the International Alexander Tchreprin prize, establishing his reputation as an important new young composer.

Akira composed his first film score, The End of the Silver Mountains, in 1946. Over the following half century he would go on to write more than 250 film scores, mainly for The Toho Film Co.

His powerful and emotional sountrack for the groundbreaking 1954 Godzilla movie is now rightly regarded as one of the most important film scores.  Akira also wrote the score Toho Film’s final Godzilla outing Godzilla Vs Destroyah (1995), this was also to be Akira’s last work for film.

Akira Ifukube passed away on February 8 2006, at the age of 91.

Personnel:
Anton Wuts – Saxophones/Flute/Music Transcription.
Vinnie Beaumont – Electric Guitar.
William Devine – Electric Bass/Propoganda/Merchandise.
Max Parkes – Drums/Percussion.
Joe Dobson – Drums/Percussion.
Adrian Thornton – Film Projectionist/Set Design/Propaganda/Merchandise.

Our interpretation of the Gordons legendary first EP. The project was limited to a couple of gigs, video and a studio recording of the result.

Personnel:
Anton Wuts – Saxophones/Flute/Music Transcription/Vocals on Right On Time.
Tane McLeay – Trombone/Tuba.
Vinnie Beaumont – Electric Guitar.
William Devine – Electric Bass/Propoganda/Audio Engineering.
Clifford Howell – Double Bass.
Dean Tinning – Drums.
Adrian Thornton – Set Design and Construction/Propaganda/Merchandise.
Liam Bourke – Vocals on Spik And Span.
Lee Hansen – Photography/FilmTransport.
Martin Poppelwell – Propaganda.
Siobhan McCormack – Propaganda.