This year’s Ether festival on the South Bank may not have had any of the astonishing genre alloys of the previous six (the Sinfonietta doing dubstep, anyone?), but still featured a reasonable line-up of white box tinkerers and and six string tamperers. Instead of seeing Battles showing off their new glam squirrel direction, I opted to check out Mira Calix translating her fine album Eyes Set Against The Sun to the comfy leather-seated environment of the Purcell Room.

Gong Gong were the support, and boy were they French. I’d had some onion soup earlier in the week, and that wouldn’t even come close to the Frenchnicity on display here. They had silly moustaches and mugged in comedy fashion to the crowd. They played some slightly dated-sounding dance music infused with traces of France’s multi-culturalism. They spoke to the crowd in French accents.

They had a killer app in their light show. One band member was an extra tasked with running around the stage pinning up bits of card, balloons, and more elaborate constructions onto which he could project images reflected from banks of mirrors stage front. All very entertaining, especially when one of the large balloons ended up being batted around over our heads in a manner unbecoming of such a traditionally serious festival.

To be fair, Gong Gong were pretty good when they stepped out from behind their banks of knobs and got jazz busy with drum kit and double bass, in front of spinning wheels of colour and light rockets.

I’d been led to expect Ellis Island Sound at this point due to a loose-with-the-facts (no!) Grauniad write-up in Saturday’s Guide. But it was to be straight into Mira Calix and “Because To Why”. Cellist Oliver Coates and viola player Xandi Van Dijk plucked and scraped - in a manner I can’t imagine being transcribed on their sheet music - as a spooked-out choir of children sailed down a turbulent river.

Much of the rest of the concert featured Calix creating delicate backdrops (the sounds of crickets eating Rice Krispies with chopsticks in a rainforest) giving nodded cues to the string section to play from their scores; the results would then be further looped and manipulated. Occasionally rhythms would emerge from this electrical soup; the industrial clanks of “Umbra Penumbra” in particular shook the walls of the Purcell Room.

The whole of the first section was played as a continuum; it lasted an hour but felt like no more than half that. After a brief pause, Calix cut loose a deep buzzy drone over which the viola and cello improvised, and the experimental ethos of Ether truly came alive.