Building the Tension: Adam Flood on Late Night Comedy Rave

“They say that all comedians want to be musicians, and all musicians want to be comedians. So for one night only, we get to pretend we're all of them,” says comedian-cross-DJ Adam Flood. His Late Night Comedy Rave shows were an underground smash at the Edinburgh Fringe and its success has led to bookings at London Fashion Week, a slew of upcoming music festivals and a tour across the country. The show’s regular collaborators include Dan Tiernan, Paddy Young and Alexandra Haddow, who loves doing the gig with her comedy mates because “we get to pretend we’re in a band.”

Rave hasn’t always been Flood’s bag. “When I was a kid I really liked guitars. I was like 'I am a guitar guy'. So I thought, as you do as a kid, my identity is that.” But after a period living in Bristol and immersing himself in its club scene, he developed an interest in all things electronic music. From the moment he saw techno DJ Ricardo Villalobos, he was entranced and started to think how he could combine comedy and his new-found passion.

“My original idea was a stand-up special that looks like Boiler Room,” with Flood facing the camera up close, DJ equipment in front of him and a crowd revelling and dancing behind. But it was the similarities between the two forms which led to Late Night Comedy Rave: they’re both built on “building the tension, then snapping it” with either a drop or a punchline. “So my theory was: let's do that at the same time and see if it works. And when it completely goes off, it's a real thrill. You get this punchline, people laugh, and then they get to go jump up and down and go mad,” like their whole body is reacting to a joke.

There’s also similarities in the communality of both mediums. Performers and attendees both feed off the vibe in the room, but Flood describes comedy as a more individual experience, where you’re “quite locked in” as an audience member. To give comedy the same freedom as a rave requires multisensory engagement: “the removal of chairs, the introduction of more darkness and smoke and lasers...I've just got to think of a way to make it stink and then I'm hitting every single [bit of the rave experience]."

Flood also credits the popularity of spoken word in electronic and pop music to his night’s success, citing the likes of Fred again.., Jamie xx and “someone that I really love called Vegyn, who has this project called Headache, which is an amazing kind of longform poem, I think about a drug-induced psychosis,” as influences. Now the public’s more familiar with the combination, the idea of snippets of comedy in the middle of a song is less of a surprise.

The gig itself is a mixed bill of comics spliced with house, techno, EDM and more. “Think of it like the comics are a bunch of vinyls I've got and I pick them up and I cut a little bit of this joke they have, maybe this thing that they do, and that's repurposed for this song, this remix.” The acts reappear throughout the night both offstage and on – amping up the crowd, dancing on stage, returning with new jokes, enjoying the atmosphere – embodying that sense of communality Flood is trying to build. 

It’s also about matching the right comic with the right music genre too. “I think usually, it’s pairing the opposite,” for example the spikiness of Horatio Gould with disco, and the darkness of Ed Night with a wave of light house. “Jin Hao Li, his drop, I remember it being quite a soft thing and then cut with jungle which was really funny. The vibe he gives off is quintessentially un-jungle.”

Late Night Comedy Rave’s success is a bit of a full circle moment for Flood. His debut Fringe hour in 2023 was about reinvention, going from “a county line drug dealer, a failed indie guy, a start-up guy, and comedian,” and ending the show flippantly saying his next transformation would be as a DJ. When putting his special out on YouTube, he realised his self-fulfilling prophecy. “We're all so predictable, huh?”

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Late Night Comedy Rave, Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 31 Jan, 10.45pm, £12
Adam Flood: Back of the Spoon, Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 1 Feb, 7.45pm, £14
Adam Flood: Clayhead (Full Comedy Special) is now available on YouTube
Follow Adam on Instagram and TikTok @floodhaha