Surf garage band Palooka 5 re-scores Fritz Lang's 1927 crazed futurist dystopian sci-fi epic Metropolis, one of the landmarks of world cinema, among the last of the silent classics.

And early cinema pioneer Georges Méliès' landmark 1904 science fiction adventure Voyage A Traverse L'Impossible (The Impossible Voyage) is given a 'live' DJ soundtrack by Lee Grimshaw (Spinout Nuggets).

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It's time to get frazzled to the lo-fi, organ-driven, B-movie-inspired sci-fi surf rock of Palooka 5 - think B52s/Joe Meek with a touch of Devo - as they live score the silent sci-fi masterpiece, Metropolis.

Metropolis is seen as the mother of sci-fi movies, an inspiration for film-makers such as George Lucas and Ridley Scott. Set in a futuristic privatised city-state run by the rich techno-industrial autocrat Joh Fredersen, the privileged ruling class disport themselves in 'pleasure parlours' while the poor slave away underground. A lovely young woman, Maria, takes up the cause of the oppressed machine workers, in so doing entrancing Fredersen's idle but idealistic son Freder, who discovers the primitive conditions the city's workers are living in, the scenes of a dehumanised proletariat. But Joh has a bizarre secret weapon: a robot, a sinister, violence-inciting metallic double which assumes Maria's form as an evil twin to provoke cataclysmic disorder, under cover of which the workers can be crushed.

Palooka 5's distinctive, hypnotic, retro-futurist sound - loping drum grooves, sparse guitar crashes, wailing vintage synths, spacey theremins and real weird harmonies - provides a suitably dramatic and uncanny soundtrack that tele-beams you straight to the action.

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To open the evening, a screening of the 1904 silent science fiction adventure film Voyage A Traverse L'Impossible (The Impossible Voyage) by the French cinema pioneer, George Méliès, with a 'live' DJ soundtrack from Lee Grimshaw (Spinout Nuggets). Inspired by memories of Jules Verne's and Adolphe D'Ennery's 1882 play Journey Through The Impossible - the film bears little connection to it - this satire of scientific exploration sees a group of geographically minded tourists attempt a journey to the sun using various methods of locomotion - railroads, automobiles, dirigible balloons, submarine boats.

And to close the night Lee DJ's in the bar, a zesty set of club soul, R'n'B, Hammond jazz, funk, Latin boogaloo and '60s garage. Join us for socialising, drinking and dancing until the midnight hour.

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Palooka 5 plays jet-propelled 1960s-tinged 'sci-fi surf music', taking reverberating traditional surf rock and weaving in a more experimental 'bad vibrations' modern twist.

Signed to the Spinout Nuggets record label they have received regular spins from BBC Radio 6 Music, including an In Concert broadcast of them at London's Finsbury Park Night Owl. USA airplay includes Drew Carey's Friday Night Freak-Out and Little Steven's Underground Garage shows (both SiriusXM). Their third LP Alien Grace was released spring 2023.

★★★★☆
'Palooka 5 tick all the boxes for that curl-shooting, shape-throwing, surf hoodang you've always dreamed of.'
Shindig Magazine

'Their tunes wouldn't be out of place on an album of lost classics by Dick Dale or The Monks.'
Tom Robinson, BBC Radio 6 Music

palooka5.co.uk