Half lizard, half machine, all party! Robot Vs Dinosaur is the most diverse and eclectic electronic event in the West Midlands. Taking place at top cocktail hangout the Island Bar on every third Friday of the month (next event – Friday 19th September!), we aim to bring brain-bothering live beats from the cream of the UK electronic underground as well as DJing an anything-goes monster mash-up featuring everything from Brian Eno to Venetian Snares.

We vapourise genre boundaries and tear pigeonholes limb from limb, if it has a man-made body and a machine’s pulse then chances are we’ve played it already! Entry is £3 for humans, but robots and dinosaurs get in for a mere £1. And, apes watch your backs- our robojurassic ranks are swelling…

Robot Vs Dinosaur was initially conceived by your hosts, DJs Ben Washbrook and Sebastian Lenton, during early 2006 while starving to death from a total lack of nights in Birmingham we could truly consider ours, a situation worsened by the then-recent death of the legendary and fondly-remembered cult Brum event Tokyo Lucky Hole.

Seemingly everywhere we went, at every party we crashed, everyone was soaking up twisted, glitch-laden beats, songs of broken robots and the sound of synths which had been left out in the sun for too long… And yet there seemed nowhere in Birmingham which was prepared to cater to this small yet dedicated audience of electronic music lovers.

As time went by, the situation became untenable; something had to be done, but who were the people to do it? That’s where we came in, commencing what was then known only as “plan RvD”. Kicking off in mid ’06 as a DJ night at Birmingham’s Sunflower Lounge, Robot Vs Dinosaur only really got into gear following our move to Island Bar at the start of 2008, following an extended hiatus. Not satisfied with mere DJing, we upped the ante and scoured the UK for the most innovative and cutting-edge underground electronic acts we could possibly find, uncovering a treasure trove of insanely imaginative new electronica along the way. And, with past performances from artists as diverse as Plant43, Calika, Datassette, Domestication of the Dog and many others we’re winning our battle, a fight to prove that electronic music is diverse enough to be loved and cherished by everyone, regardless of preconceived notions or personal taste.

It is a battle which will never end.

An average night at Robot Vs Dinosaur may include (but is certainly not limited to) music from the likes of 13&god, add n To (x), aphex twin, arovane, autechre, battles, berg sans nipple, blockhead, boards of canada, the books, broadcast, brokeback, brothomstates, buffalo daughter, capitol K, caustic window, ceephax acid crew, chris clark, cornelius, cylob, daedalus, dntel, fizzarum, the flashbulb, four tet, germlin, holy fuck, hood, i am robot and proud, john cage, kid 606, M83, manitoba, matmos, max tundra, takako minekawa, modified toy orchestra, mouse on mars, ninja cuts, the notwist, OOO, plone, polysics, polygon window, the postal service, prefuse 73, pulseprogramming, bogdan raczynski, ulrich schnauss, squarepusher, stereolab, tarwater, amon tobin, to rococco rot, tortoise, venetian snares, luke vibert, xiu xiu, susumu yokota and whatever else we can find knocking about down the back of our computers…