A rockin' 4-piece consisting of poet-mandolinist Steve Larkin, double bass songface Susanna Starling, mutley-instru-mentalist Richard Brotherton and ringletted drummer Alex Horwill, INFLATABLE BUDDHA have had many incarnations and members since we named ourselves after a pub ornament at our first proper gig in late 2003.

With performance poet Steve Larkin (winner of Canada's 2004 Spoken Word Olympics, co-founder of the renowned Hammer & Tongue UK Slam Poetry network) as our compellingly outrageous frontman, plus jazz-folk songbird Susanna Starling on upright bass and vocals as second in command, the band's bedrock of support is provided by sax, guitar, harmonica and vox from Delta (blues) male Richard Brotherton and a rocksteady beat from enigmatic sticksman Alex Horwill. Thanks too must go to all past Buddhists for their invaluable composition, songwriting and personality input, without which we wouldn't be the crazy mashup of klezmer, punk, folk and good old rock'n'roll that we are today!*

Nowadays our repertoire consists mainly of words by Mr Larkin, Ms Starling and Mr Brotherton and tunes composed by the band. We like to describe what we do as 'Philosophy you can dance to', putting our message across with a hefty dose of humour. Defying easy categorisation, we have been variously described as: one of Festival Eye Magazine's favourite bands; 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' at Oxford Folk Festival (read more comments here). In the end though, there's really nothing for it but to see us live and make up your own mind! Our aim is to satisfy: if you don't find yourself throwing caution to the wind and dancing like your own dad at a wedding, we suggest you might like to a) check your pulse b) have another drink. :) Luckily, our gig archive seems to suggest that we at the very least please some of the people, some of the time!

*Former Buddhists, left to right: Mauro Sanin, 'Purple' Dave Hart, Simon Reece and Rupert Alison