This Et Al

To get past the four burly jocks at the door I have to do three straight keep-ups with their football. Success, second time lucky. First time I run into the corridor wall. Up the stairs after that, into sapping tropical heat, just in time to catch the closing song from shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames. The frantic 'Blood Brothers goes four-to-the-floor' yelping and squealing is fantastically riotous, even if lyrics are thin. I regret my fashionable lateness, wishing I'd seen more of Dance To The Radio's new hot signings.

Fresh from the pages of the scene-toting NME, The Sunshine Underground have found time to fill a slot on the bill. I expect to be amazed and bedazzled - this is the new four-boy face of Yorkshire pop. The next Kaiser Chiefs, perhaps? These songs are kind and sweet, made for radio. Clearly owing much to Bloc Party, The Sunshine Underground strike all the right musical poses from the artrock disco 16ths, to the delayed guitar swoops and sweeps. To their credit, the band's infusion of calypso rhythms (drop your guitar, pick up a cowbell, clave as hard as you can) gives the set some joyous carnival flavour, but for the main part this does feel a little familiar. The rousing pop does occasionally stir the loins of my partyloving heart, but with most songs clocking in at an unrefined six minutes, the band's commercial viability is somewhat undermined by their music's own excessiveness. If it was shorter, it would sparkle more. The future will see them proud; the present sees them slightly imperfect.

The dark room's climate has become strangely grotesque by the time O Fracas haphazardly kickstart their way through a wall of low-frequency feedback. They spike about, all retro-like, loosely lobbing some prog-bluegrass guitar tricks into a Hawaii 5-0 waterpool. You remember getting thrown around by the wave machine as a kid? This is how that sounded. This is the waves hitting your ears, the homemade tempest throwing you around, a mega fun fiasco in jazz rock 'n' roll. O Fracas are flippant, fun, kooky - yes I'm having fun, yes I'm baking hot. I'm lost in a swirly wirly, spiky stompy, funky, bouncing messy story - globally influenced, yet told with a sense of humour that is inimitably and profoundly English.

With static Tim Burton haircuts wavering towards the sky, and sharp red shirts cut with straight black ties, This Et Al look something like a gothically distorted Kraftwerk. And then within a moment of taking up guitars, there are arms and guitars flailing, the stage is alight, big and spooky, This Et Al take a crimson hammer to your ears. As heavy and graceful as Far or The Velvet Teen, a sound this big belongs outside this minute sauna - it could conquer much larger venues with ease, even the festival stages. This needs to be shared. Style, nuance, and charisma wrapped up in a painfully gorgeous controlled havoc.

Although slickly executed, it's so dangerous; a note never wavers and a beat never drops, but your hips shake impulsively throughout. It's shamelessly epic in size and ambition, but there's an artful dignity about this band that keep them thankfully unpretentious and guilt-free. Singer Wu's hypnotic voice sounds angelic as he wails the high notes; an ethereal voice seemingly trying to escape the rest of his band's evilness. Amidst the sea of wonderful and uncompromising riffs, standout track 'You've Driven For Miles & Not Remembered A Thing' and its "you'd better run until you find yourself" stop-start hook, blows me away completely; not more than anything else in the set, but more than everything I've heard this month. Everything collides effortlessly, meshing into the perfect blend of heavy rock and captivating melody that post-millenium emo always strived to achieve but failed to perfect. I'm shaking and nervous. Covered in sweat. Delighted.