As one half of the revered DFA production team (responsible for The Rapture), James Murphy is considered one of New York's finest purveyors of punk-funk electronica, and his band LCD Soundsystem have already been widely touted as one of the most energetic acts of the 21st century.
Despite the hype, the initial signs tonight aren't good - the live interpretations aren't a patch on the recent self-titled album and the one-dimensional, monotonous fillers that make up the start of the set waste far too much time.
Thankfully, it doesn't last, and we're bombarded with choice offkilter moments, particularly the strangely quaint, Fall-inflected Daft Punk Is Playing At My Housewhich has Murphy ranting in Mark E. Smith-style over danceable breaks.
All manner of instruments pump out a frankly relentless sound onslaught, much of it a joyously gleeful mess and a brilliant foil for Murphy's slurred patter and inebriated, shambolic demeanour. As his voice mutates into a host of otherworldly electronics, I lost count of the number of times he caught his head on the mike.
Everything shifts through a continuum of disparate styles and tempos, taking in the most eclectic list of artists ever.
Just when you've got the measure of it all, a brilliantly rousing version of Losing My Edge and the noisy atmospheric barrage of Tribulations shakes your bones into life. One song sounds so much like The Bravery (or Visage, depending on your age), you almost feel yourself doing one of those cartoon double-takes.
This exhilarating, ramshackle experience is like having all the toxins forcibly flushed from your body by malfunctioning robots, but you'd expect nothing less from an unhinged genius who has randomly cited Kraftwerk, Siouxsie, Aphex Twin, ESG, The Violent Femmes, The Human League and Animal Collective as influences. For once, the hype and the zeitgeist appear to be in tandem.
Velimir Pavle Ilic
