It’s the return of the outstanding Pilgrimage night at Hare & Hounds, featuring the prismatic math-rock of Strobes, the organ-driven funk of Three Step Manouevre, and hosted by the brass-band jazz of Young Pilgrims themselves. Getting your head around Strobes’ music is like trying to fit together a multi-dimensional jigsaw of a circuitboard. It’s obtuse, broken, intricately detailed. Then, at just the right moment, the group hands you a corner piece, delivering a tasty odd-meter groove and an onrush of energy; and suddenly, the last three minutes of your life (almost) make sense. Strobes live in the borderlands of rock and futuristic jazz – as if Esperanza Spalding had grown up on Squarepusher and Adebisi Shank instead of Charlie Parker and Brazilian pop. Of course, there’s more than a little resemblance to guitarist Matt Calvert’s other gig in Three Trapped Tigers – but here, there’s no big anthemic wash-outs, no widescreen moments. Instead, it’s a vision of taut, intricate machinery; tangibly live and human, even as it scales up and up in frantic waves of riffs, until you can’t tear your eyes away.

Fri 3 Feb, The Hare And Hounds, 106 High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham B14 7JZ. 8.30pm, £8. skiddle.com