Hedluv and Passman: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Gilded Balloon Teviot

Bored of hip-hop stars boasting of how much gold and diamond bling they’ve got? Well, this  proud Cornish duo could be for you. The most precious metal they  rap about is tin, extracted from the mines their communities were built upon. If they had their way, Redruth would hold equal status to Compton in the hip-hop gazetteer.

Full-on raps about mundane subjects are something of a comedy staple, but with their immense enthusiasm, Hedluv and Passman inject a great sense of fun into their gig.

There’s only half a dozen of us tonight, but vocalist Passman is sweating his pasties off, leaping around and striking poses like he’s Freddie Mercury at Wembley. That he does so in too-tight shorts and too-short vest is disturbingly funny. Hedluv, behind the cheap Casio keyboard in his bobble hat is usually more sedate, though he has his moments, too.

The energy is not that focussed, making for  a rather messy gig – but more in the spirit of punk than being totally shambolic. It means, for example, that the lyrics aren’t always clear; but that the duo have no trouble in persuading the miniscule audience to dance in the aisles at the end, with none of the reluctance such a request normally gets.

They start with the best song, a jump-around number about ‘doing it dreckly’ – or postponing things indefinitely  – while others tackle the thorny issues of swimming in the sea, playing too much Goldeneye on the video console, or smokers who leave the pub door open when they sneak outside. The closer, sampling David Attenborough documentaries, is another winner.

Yet there’s more they could do with this show. We don’t find out much about the duo, other than that they’re rather unsuccessful musicians (Conchords, anyone?) while  their Cornish metier could, if they chose, be exploited more to produce a self-contained world, slightly detached from the rest of us. Either would be more reason to engage with them over an hour, rather than simply bundling from one track to the next.

So it’s all a bit rough around the edges at the moment. Nevertheless with a bit of application Hedluv and Passman could yet be the South West’s answer to The Midnight Beast.