Toy Music is the name of an interesting-sounding (in every sense of the word) shindig that’s going down at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, on Friday 22 October. It’ll see a couple of artists eschewing the regular snoozefest of ‘real’ instrumentation and using instead a collection of home-made contraptions and toys to make their music.

Pierre Bastien builds his own ‘musical machinery’ to create surreal, minimal music which, according to The Guardian, ‘makes this musical machine add up to so much more than its wheezing, spinning – and very moving – parts.’ He’s also going to be playing along with his automated musicians on a pocket trumpet. And that’s not something you see every day. And we don’t think that ‘pocket trumpet’ is some kind of horrifying euphemism.

Bastien will be joined by Poland’s Małe Instrumenty, a five-piece whose name translates as ‘Small Instruments’ – rather fittingly, as they perform using a collection of toy instruments and, well, little objects.

Oxford Contemporary Music have teamed up with arty music promoters Sounduk for this show, and it continues their tradition for bringing interesting musics to our fair city. Interested? Things kick off (in a Subbuteo-sized fashion) at the North Wall at 8.00 pm, and you’ll need £10 to get in. Find out more at the websites of Oxford Contemporary Music and Sounduk.