大象传媒

On a night when the town is rammed with gigs everywhere, the question is where to go? Mmm, let's take a chance on the two best sounding names of the night.

And So I Watch You From Afar (henceforth known as ASIWYFA) are beautiful. 听They're epic without being indulgent, psychedelic without being retro, and take us on inner and outer journeys, tripping along a path exposed by the likes of Pink Floyd and Kyuss. It must be the filmic and beautiful instrumentals, with shimmering guitars, the soaring emotional voyages that drift between delicacy and heaviness, the velvet glove and the iron fist. It's grandiose, it's wonderful, it's hypnotic. Who needs words? ASIWYFA should be watched very closely indeed.

yourcodenameis:milo (milo from here on) are a gregarious bunch of Geordies. They're a bit of fun, and bit of a good time, and having recovered from a night in the Limelight, they're here to give us a bit of a show. 'Scream It Out' is a maelstrom of emotional rock music, built around a multi-guitar assault, while 'Understand' is a collaboration between Queens Of The Stone Age and The Who. They're heavy rock with an ear for pop melodies, making heavy space blues. With the stage too small for them, their bassist is despatched to the floor (insert your own joke about the relative merits of the bass here) as they impress us with 'I'm Impressed', a claustrophobic pop rock song which even seems reminiscent of The Divine Comedy(!) meeting Rage Against The Machine and Korn. Fronted by (what looks like) Felix Basement Jaxx's younger brother (Felix got the funk, he got the punk) this entertaining and fun-loving group, are capable of bludgeoning assault and Sigur Ros-esque lightness of touch.

Ending with oldie 'The One That Called Your Name', they drag us down into a hurricane of nightmarish noise, an effect added to by Felix Jr donning a horse's head mask that, while obviously fake, is so much more disturbing for being so. But in a good way, you know.

They say you should pick race-horses (maybe where they got the horse's head?) by if you like their name, maybe we should try the same with bands - at the minute it's paying off.

William Johnston