Now a rockin' 4-piece featuring Steve Larkin, Susanna Starling, Richard Brotherton and Alex Horwill, INFLATABLE BUDDHA have had many incarnations and members since they named themselves after a pub ornament at their first gig in autumn 2003.

With performance poet Steve Larkin (winner of Canada’s 2004 Spoken Word Olympics, co-founder of Oxford’s renowned Hammer & Tongue Poetry Slam) as a compelling frontman, the band’s versatile bedrock of support was initially provided by the unique combination of multi-instrumentalist ‘Purple Dave' Hart, blues harmonica and hurdy-gurdy-playing Galician folk-rocker Mauro Sanin and vocalist and bassist Susanna Starling. Since then, the list of band members has included superb accordionist Rupert Alison, multi-instrumentalist Simon Reece and accordionist Robin Morris, sometimes even all at once (!) - the band arriving at its current lineup with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Richard Brotherton and sticksman Alex Horwill.

With a repertoire of original, co-written material they like to classify under 'Philosophy you can dance to', INFLATABLE BUDDHA put their message across with a hefty dose of humour and a rocksteady beat. Defying easy categorisation, they have been described as the kind of band Tim Burton might form '...if he were British and played klezmer music'; ‘art-punk-folk-poets’; 'Oxford's answer to Gogol Bordello' and 'the biggest laugh of the weekend' (Oxford Folk Festival 2007 - read more comments here). In the end though, there’s really nothing for it but to see them live and make up your own mind. Their aim is to satisfy: if you've not tapped your toes, seen and heard something enjoyable, memorable and - above all - FUN at an Inflatable Buddha gig, then you might need to check your pulse! (Or request your money back.) Luckily, their impressive gig archive seems to suggest that they at the very least please some of the people, some of the time.

:)