This night in King’s Cross’s confusingly ennobled Cross Kings was billed as a meeting between New Zealand and UK electro-acoustic improvisation, found sound and noise artists. In case that all sounded a bit serious, the Cross Kings website advertised the event as taking place in The Jester Bar downstairs. When I descended the steps I was confronted with something which didn’t sound quite as I had been expecting. Rhythm. Melody. Even vocals. Turns out the joke was on me, they’d switched the noiseniks to the stage upstairs, downstairs being used for the launch of some RnB single entitled, with an endearingly misguided sense of optimism, “Wanna See You Dance”.

I returned back upstairs as Ben Spiers was underway with his short set of noise guitar, hammering at the back of the instrument’s neck with his hand to produce some thunderous rumble. I preferred his second piece, in which he played long decaying notes, and set about them with his array of pedals, however he was off before had made any significant impression.

I’m not sure exactly how the Frenchman Julien Ottavi fitted into the NZ/UK axis, but musically he hit the spot with his laptop set of powerful, harsh drones. It felt like being strapped to the undercarriage of a speeding train, with the engine howling above and wind roaring past your face, accompanied by hideous metal-on-metal squeal. Nasty, brutal and (too) short.

Members of the international collective the Radioactive Ensemble contrasted this with a pleasing set of free improvisation. They employed tenor sax, two guitarists – one playing deep, billowing drones, while the other scrabbled around with clothes pegs on his strings – and someone on “other”. Springs, coils, general detritus, that sort of thing. Those particular sounds got a bit lost in an enjoyable loud finale which centred around some long, low, loud honks from the horn.

As I was really here to see sometime London-dwelling New Zealander Peter Wright, all this other very fine stuff was very much a bonus. You may remember me enthusing about his Pretty Mushroom Cloud album earlier this year; well, he skipped the country round about then and has only just returned. And he isn’t staying long. So I was pleased to get the chance to catch this, and even more pleased when it lived up to my high expectations. With a laptop at his feet and a guitar he produced some dense and quite epic soundscapes, but with melodies floating deep within swarms of static. It managed to bring to mind an extended collaboration between Fennesz and Stars of the Lid, but what impressed me most was the control he showed, keeping the set ever on the edge of boiling over. Apparently he has a couple of new releases due out sometime this year on the Ultra Hard Gel label, but more accurate information is disappointingly thin on the ground.

The night was brought to a suitable close by his namesake and fellow countryman Nigel Wright, with a blissful laptop set of gently shifting tones and drones, the kind of thing that sounds different depending on the angle at which you hold your head (apologies to those sitting next to me who were probably confused by the sight of my head lolling around like a balloon on a stick).  If anything it was a little too quiet; if it was louder, I’d have wanted to get my pyjamas on, climb inside, and sleep there. Lovely stuff.