Sonic Cathedral

Manchester-based sextet Daniel Land & The Modern Painters may be a largely unknown quantity outside of their native region just yet, but make no mistake, their praises will be sung loud and clear from the highest rooftops before long. With just three fairly low-key releases to their name so far, Land's star is still very much in its ascendancy. Recent single 'Within The Boundaries' has a glacial quality about it that recalls Slowdive at their most eerily potent, while future 45 in the making 'Glitterball' sounds like Galaxie 500 updated for the iPod and Xbox generation. The fact that he's managed to hold the notoriously fickle Hoxton crowd's attention span for 40 minutes surely tells uits own story. Watch this space...

School Of Seven Bells seem to have attracted a fair bit of attention by way of one of their members' employment in a previous outfit. It may come as a surprise then to most people that the individual concerned, Benjamin Curtis, takes more of a background role here, constructing layer-upon-layer of reverb drenched guitar in contrast to the almost choral accompaniment that his two fellow bandmates provide. The focal point then, without any shadow of a doubt, purely lies at the feet of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, whose ghostly mannerisms coupled with delicately poised harmonies make compulsive viewing, in a transfixing kind of way.

Tonight's set is largely culled from debut long player Alpinisms, a record that may just be a late contender for album of the year. What makes the live show even more compelling is the way the band switch almost without the blink of an eyelid from full-on, transcendental noise ('Chain') to sweet as you like, Cocteaus-esque psycho babble lullabies ('iamundernodisguise'), all held together by the impeccable vocal talents of the Dehezas.

This may be their first ever live performance on British soil but one suspects it won't be their last, and the next time School Of Seven Bells visit these shores expect the ...featuring ex-Secret Machine... caption to have disappeared from the billboard posters too, as this evening's exceptional set proves they're more than capable of making a name for themselves.