Formed in the early Eighties by improvisational musician Paul Burwell, sculptor Richard Wilson, and installation artist Anne Bean, the Bow Gamelan Ensemble put on audio-visual spectaculars involving fireworks and pyrophones, motorized percussive instruments and noise-making devices made from salvage materials. For 1986’s “In C and Air”, they created a complex pulley system to animate the entire ICA stage, turning it into a giant instrument with trapdoors opening and shutting in deafening unison. A roboticized car flashed its headlights and slammed its doors as if dancing, a choir of vacuum cleaners on full blast dropped down from the ceiling, and a symphony of fire alarms erupted. There is a YouTube clip of extracts from that ICA performance, but here we offer a short documentary about what is probably Bow Gamelan’s peak feat: Offshore Rig. Staged on Lots Ait, a tiny island in the Thames River near Kew, this short series of concerts found the missing link between Test Dept’s metal-bashing clangour and the Land Art of figures like Robert Smithson. The first section of this film comprises on-site interviews with Burwell, Bean and Wilson a few days before the first concert, when they worked 16 hours a days and slept rough on the island, and accordingly look bedraggled and in dire need of a bath. The trio show off an enormous glass-chime made out of a 100 suspended shards, demonstrate how white noise can be generated by spraying a firehose at cabinets, and explain how fireworks can work not just as a visual thrill but as “a musical element” of their concerts. Wilson notes that “like with all Bow Gamelan performances, it’s mainly the instruments that do the performing – and it’s just us lot, as technicians, running around hoping to keep the thing going.” The second half of the documentary offers highlights from the outdoor, after-dark concerts – a glorious audio-visual cacophony of explosions, flaming gongs, clouds of smoke coloured with dye, steam whistles, and more.

• Simon Reynolds