Captive State

It's close to midnight and there's an insanely joyous grin broadening across the faces of many here, myself included. For they reckon, or rather know, that something big is going to happen - with nine members on stage and mountains of equipment piled up around them, it would be difficult for it not to really. Not only does it turn out to be the largest quantity of people and machinery seen in this venue, but also turns out to be the ensemble that provoke the most positive physical reaction that's been seen here for a long time too. Yes, Captive State can make people dance.

Billed as a hip-hop group, the State are indeed a collective that, as far as arranging themselves onto a crammed stage goes, centre around a two-decking DJ and heavily articulate MC, but they come across instead as the deeply-layered hybrid of many a funky genre. Indeed, the clamorous opening and some of the more epic passages owe themselves to the ‘rocktronica' of, say, Death In Vegas, whilst the inclusion of a three-piece brass band and the organically lilting percussion show roots in neo-jazz fusion and world music (although, as the group prove tonight, all music is world music). Whilst the style is refreshingly hard to pin down, the emcee in question has the whole rapping business sorted, with the fast-delivered rhymes covering paranoia, the daily grind and, once the megaphone is sound-checked, social politics. On the odd occasion that things become a bit laidback, it's a chance for his dark and menacing words to be mentally digested whilst the trombone glides away in the background. On the many occasions where head-nodding is gracefully induced, the rhythmical dexterity of the voice blends in as part of the dense and difficult-to-penetrate sound amalgamations being created. And when the music becomes so climactic that he feels the need to produce something melodic, it's close to enrapturing.

Almost inevitably near the end of the set, each member is introduced and given the chance to solo off on a tangent, proving (as its aim may be) that there is much more at work than those locked in a groove can initially fully appreciate, and is asserted even further when, amidst the showcasing of the two percussionists and the double bass, they break into a high tempo salsa passage just because they can. The place erupts. Oxford may not be considered the hip-hop centre of the world, but it seems that, as far as fusion goes at least, it's not where you're from; it's where you're at. And Captive State are at some place nicely dark and funky indeed.