Asobi Seksu

Desperate to shrug off the "shoegaze" tag they may be, but for Asobi Seksu there's no doubt that without such recognition from the incumbents of the scene that celebrates itself their music may have gone unheard outside of their native Brooklyn.

Which on tonight's evidence would be an absolute travesty, as they haven't just merely raised their game from the last time they were over here, but set the sound channels to a higher dimension altogether. Obviously the fact the stage floor is strewn with various pedals from A Place To Bury Strangers' Oliver Ackerman's Death By Audio range has a lot to do with it, but let's not take anything away from the way James Hanna savagely assaults his guitar for the vast majority of their 45-minute set either.

That's not to say that the Asobi Seksu live experience is nothing more than a sonic attack on the eardrums of course; on the contrary, as what sets this four-piece apart from many of their peers is an uncanny knack of marrying irresistable pop hooks to their blissed out ambivalence, not to mention Yuki Chikudate's gorgeous vocal transitions between English and Japanese that recall Liz Fraser's admittedly unintelligible but always swooning voice that doubled up as extra instrumention throughout the Cocteau Twins halcyon career.

With a new album, Hush set to drop in February of next year, tonight's set was a 50-50 split between water testing the new material amidst the more eloquent moments of 2006's breakthrough record Citrus, and on an evening of many highlights, forthcoming single 'Familiar Light' and the widescreen crescendo of 'Gliss' stand out as an appetiser for the former, while the dizzy dreampop of 'New Years' and mini-sonic holocaust of 'Red Sea' proved timely reminders of why we fell in love with this band in the first place.

Maybe their protestations were right after all as Asobi Seksu clearly have their heads way above the stars rather than staring down at their toecaps.