HYPNOTIC BLURT

According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, blurt is a transitive verb that means “to say something suddenly, without stopping to think.” Saturday night at the Lingerie, England’s Blurt was a performance-art band, an action verb led by Ted Milton, who said a lot of sudden things without stopping to think.

That doesn’t mean he was mindless. Backed by a synthesizer player and a bedrock, primal drummer, this post-punk idiot savant wildly grimaced and gestured like a Punch and Judy doll, wept, cackled and squawked his sax as he delivered Blurt-toons like “I Spit on Your Brain.” It wasn’t always apparent what Milton was on about, but with the music hitting several trance grooves (inducing some of the unlikeliest dancing ever seen at the Lingerie), Milton’s goon show became persuasively hypnotic. Part temper tantrum, part social provocation, Milton and Blurt are the products of a fine madness.