Becoming only the second Nottingham act ever to play a full headline show at Rock City, Dog Is Dead returned to their home town on Saturday night, topping an all-local bill and facing a packed house. It was a perfect way for the band to end their year, which has seen them signing to a major label, gaining national radio play and press attention, playing larger venues and festival stages (including a riotously well-received set at Splendour over the summer), appearing on E4’s Skins, and releasing plenty of fine music along the way.

Stepping in to fill the gap left by Tribes, who pulled out of the gig due to an injury, Kagoule opened the show in impressive style, visibly growing in confidence throughout their set. The vintage Sonic Youth t-shirt worn by singer Cai Burns gave you a clue where their influences lay, as the trio drew on elements from early Nineties grunge and shoegaze, mixing them with a modern sensibility and a youthful approach. Still only in their mid-teens, the band made good on the promise of their debut EP Son, adapting to their new surroundings with commendable maturity.

Kappa Gamma were up next, their slot on the bill secured by winning a competition in which local music experts, the voting public – and finally Dog Is Dead themselves – selected the act which they felt most deserved a place on the Rock City stage. The band also claim Bruce Forsyth as one of their biggest supporters – and while this might have come as a surprise to Brucie himself, who was more focussed on hosting the Strictly Come Dancing final than cheering on a Nottingham indie band, a generous supply of Forsyth face masks helped to perpetuate the illusion.

Kappa Gamma’s complex, powerful math-rock made them the ideal warm-up act, and the crowd responded with heart-warming enthusiasm, moshing furiously and cheering them to the rafters. Barely known at the start of the year, they will have won many new fans, and a bright future surely awaits them in 2012.

By the time that Dog Is Dead took to the stage, anticipation had reached fever pitch, and the band were duly greeted like homecoming heroes. Opening with their third single River Jordan, the set mixed familiar favourites with some brand new tracks, which offered a taster for the forthcoming debut album.

This was also Nottingham’s first chance to welcome new drummer Dan Harvey to the band, following Lawrence Libor’s departure in August. The sole non-native musician on the bill – he’s a Doncaster lad – Dan’s delight was clear for all to see.

That aside, all the familiar elements of the Dog Is Dead sound were in place: Trev’s sax, Joss’s keyboards, Rob’s calmly commanding vocals, those soaring, almost church-like five-part harmonies, the chiming guitar runs, the insistent melodies, and the anthemic choruses.

Of the older songs, Young was the inevitable mid-set highlight, its chanted refrain (“Hold your breath and count to ten, we’re losing touch, we’re losing friends”) bellowed back at the band by the whole room. The current single (Hands Down) and its B-side (Burial Ground) closed the main set, leaving us in no doubt as to the encore.

As the opening bars of Glockenspiel Song rang out, Rock City erupted into full-on delirium. Fists pumped the air, heels pounded the floor, and a thousand voices belted out the lines that adorn the back of the new t-shirts: “We are a mess, we are failures, and we love it!”

“If the bells don’t ring in our home town”, sang Rob Milton, “they’re just cheats and liars”. The next time that the lads headline Rock City, perhaps we should be putting St Mary’s Church on standby.  In the meantime, let’s congratulate Dog Is Dead on a remarkable year, and wish them every success for the year to come.

For someone who dominated pop so totally in the early Eighties – in 1981 alone, he had seven singles and three albums in the charts – Adam Ant’s legacy has been unfairly overlooked. A drawn-out battle with mental illness didn’t help; between 1996 and 2010, the former star played just one live show, and it seemed unlikely that we would ever hear from him again.

Just over a year ago, Adam started to make a few tentative returns to the spotlight. The gigs were low-key at first, but they were enough for the word to spread: against all the odds, the man had found his form again.

Expectations were therefore running high for last night’s show, which attracted a mixture of fans from the cult punk band days, nostalgic forty-somethings, and a fair number of curious younger observers. A few had gone the whole hog, plastering white stripes across their faces in tribute to Adam’s signature look.

Their efforts were more than matched by the 57-year old legend himself, who was decked out in a huge, feathered pirate hat and a gold brocade jacket, with a black cross daubed on one temple. The “dandy highwayman” of 1981 had returned to life; bespectacled and a little thicker round the waist, but still instantly recognisable. A trim little moustache completed the look. It was impossible not to be reminded of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, until you remembered that Adam was the originator, not the imitator.

In place of The Ants, backing was provided by The Good, The Mad & The Lovely Posse (“they’re good, I’m mad”), which featured two drummers (how could it not?) and the burlesque performer Georgina Baillie, no stranger to unwelcome press attention herself. (You might remember her as the girl in the centre of the Brand/Ross/Sachs hoo-hah.)

Instead of opening with one of the big hits, the marathon 27-song set began with an obscure track from the early days of The Ants: Plastic Surgery, from the soundtrack of Derek Jarman’s 1978 punk movie Jubilee. It set the tone for much of what followed, as Adam reconnected his pop career with his formative punk roots. Almost all the hits were there – Stand And Deliver, Goody Two Shoes, Antmusic – but so were the early singles, album tracks and B-sides. The B-sides in particular were a real treat: Beat My Guest, Kick, Fall In, a blisteringly brilliant Red Scab, and a deliciously kinky Whip In My Valise, surely a blueprint for much of Suede’s early material.

Compellingly energised throughout – hollering and strutting and baring his teeth, and ripping his T-shirt half-open during Kings Of The Wild Frontier – the singer only stumbled once. Introducing his 1995 single Wonderful as “the only love song I ever wrote”, Adam struggled his way through the song, which sounded awkwardly at odds with the rest of the set.  He recovered with a brand new song, written in tribute to the late rockabilly singer Vince Taylor: a fallen star, who never recovered from a descent into drug abuse and madness.

Based on the evidence of this magnificent show – performed with dashing, if damaged, panache and cheered to the rafters by a rapturous crowd – Adam Ant looks to have escaped that kind of sorry fate. It was truly heart-warming to see him back where he belonged: on stage, tarted up to the nines, standing and delivering, and bringing smiles to the faces of his reunited “insect nation”.

Set list: Plastic Surgery, Dog Eat Dog, Beat My Guest, Kick, Car Trouble, Zerox, Ants Invasion, Deutscher Girls, Stand And Deliver, Puss ‘N Boots, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, Wonderful, Vince Taylor, Whip In My Valise, Desperate But Not Serious, Antmusic, Cleopatra, Never Trust A Man (With Egg On His Face), Goody Two Shoes, Vive Le Rock, Christian D’Or, Lady, Fall In, Red Scab, Prince Charming, Get It On, Physical (You’re So).

“Are you here for the binaural?” The respectable looking lady to our right leaned over to us, with a friendly, enquiring smile, before introducing herself as the mother of Swimming’s singer John Sampson, and their drummer Pete. During the conversation which followed, I was hit with a new thought: to fully grasp where the art is coming from, perhaps you need to talk to the mother. For John and Pete’s mum was not only a mine of information – biographical details, key career highlights, the full skinny – but she was also possessed of a keen understanding of the ideas, inspirations and aspirations that have informed John’s songcraft.

And there was nothing that she didn’t know about “binaural” performance methodology, either. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it’s a method of sound recording that seeks to reproduce the exact sensation of being in the same room as the musicians, by means of microphones which are attached to the ears of the binaural broadcaster.

For this unique performance at Broadway, Swimming were cloistered away in the Lounge, while the rest of us gathered inside the Café Bar, each equipped with a pair of high-specification cordless headphones. Our channeller for the evening was Dallas Simpson, who has been working within this medium for the past ten years. “My ears are your ears”, he told us before the set began, explaining that we were about to be offered “a one-to-one relationship with Swimming”.

Continue reading this review.

Perhaps they’ll never be the slickest of acts, but Fists – who, despite booking the acts and promoting the night, were happy to place themselves at the bottom of the bill – aren’t the sort of band who will let the odd wobble knock them off their perches. Not that they were exactly perching in the first place; The Chameleon’s lack of a raised stage literally placed the band on a level with their audience, allowing an easy rapport to bloom.

Mixing brand new material with relatively old favourites such as Ascending (which has to be in the running for Nottingham’s single of the year), the band exuded a ragged good cheer.  This sat well with the amiable menace of their music, the guitars coalescing into a sustained collective growl.  Fists have a winning knack for playing as if teetering on the edge of a precipice; it could all collapse in an instant, but by lashing themselves together for support, they battle on through. Their journey peaked with the final track Stag, in which a steady one-note throb gradually became subsumed into a raging squall, climaxing with a rasping, chanted refrain from the whole band.

Continue reading this review.

For those who still remember Radio Trent in its Seventies and Eighties glory days, when the station broadcast on 301 metres AM, Trent Sound’s studio address should hold a special resonance. In point of fact, there wasn’t a “301 Coventry Road, Bulwell” before the service launched on June 13th – but for station manager Andy Lloyd, who sold his adjacent computer business in order to fund the start-up, the chance to revive the memory was too good to pass up.

It’s a fitting inspiration for a station that seeks to “capture the magic, fun and local identity of Radio Trent” – although for the latter-day owners of the now defunct Trent FM, which was subsumed into the Capital behemoth on January 3rd, the tribute fell on somewhat stony ground.

According to Lloyd, “All hell broke loose; they sent a courier up from London on a motorbike, with a cease and desist letter. They didn’t want us to use the name Trent at all. We had to sign certain undertakings about things that we wouldn’t do, and they in turn “permitted” us to use the word Trent. We pointed out that it’s actually the name of a river – which they may not have been aware of, down in London – and it’s not really in their gift to grant. We’ve got Trent Valley Windows, Trent Kebabs… Trent everything, really.”

While various Trent exiles – including the station’s first ever on-air presenter, John Peters – clubbed together at radiotrent.co.uk, which launched as a web-only service three weeks after Trent Sound, Lloyd and his team started to forge a different path. Their ultimate objective is to secure a community radio licence, which would allow them to migrate to FM full time. There will be a chance to do that in 2013, when Ofcom opens its doors to the next round of licensing applications – but until then, the station is obliged to remain almost entirely internet-based, broadcasting round the clock from www.trentsound.com.

Despite this restriction, there are still periodic opportunities for Trent Sound to hit the city’s radio dials, thanks to Ofcom’s “restricted service licences” (or RSLs, as they say in the business). These can be granted to stations who are preparing to apply for a permanent licence, up to a maximum of two 28-day periods per year.

Handily timed for the holiday period, Trent Sound’s first RSL is scheduled to run from December 12th until January 8th. You’ll find them right at the top of the dial – on 87.9 FM, just to the left of Radio 2 – and if you like what you hear, they’re hoping you’ll follow them back onto the internet, after the licence expires. In this respect, the welcome lack of on-air adverts should help curry favour with new listeners. “We really need to get the station out there”, says Lloyd, “and we don’t give a stuff about making money”.

Although the station’s weekday output sticks to an oldies-based format – nothing before 1965, nothing after 1995 – a wide array of evening and weekend specialist slots aim to create “a radio station for everybody”, according to Lloyd. There are programmes dedicated to rock, indie, R&B, house, world/folk and blues, as well as a gay show on Saturday nights, and a three hour show on Wednesday evenings called Notts Live, which is dedicated to promoting local talent.

Presented by Andy Haynes and Bainy Bain, Notts Live has been doing its thing since September 2010. After its original hosts Sherwood Radio shut down in May, the show quickly found a new home at Trent Sound. Each week’s edition is themed around acts that will be playing in town over the following week, and a full gig guide is broadcast during the first hour. “We try not to be genre-based”, says Andy Haynes. “If they’re from Nottingham, we’ll try and feature them.”

Since its inception, Notts Live has featured tracks by around five hundred Nottingham acts.  It’s a staggering total, which speaks volumes about the healthy state of the current scene. Live studio sessions have featured such local worthies as Will Jeffrey, Alexa Hawksworth, Adam Peter Smith and Euler, and regular “two hour takeovers” have been hosted by the likes of Satnam’s Tash and the Amber Herd.  No stranger to music-making himself, Andy Haynes has been known to join the Amber Herd on stage, brandishing his Theremin. (“I put myself out there as a bit of a Theremin slag”, he explains, “but I’ve not had too much take-up on that.”) The Notts Live brand also extends to occasional live promotions, and to this end there will be a “Notts Live Office Christmas Party” at the Jam Cafe on Dec 21st, headlined by Spaceships Are Cool and broadcast live on the show.

As for the rest of Trent Sound’s schedule, Andy Lloyd’s operates an “open access” policy, which presents opportunities for aspiring broadcasters to get involved. “This doesn’t mean that anybody can”, he cautions, “because you have to have some degree of professionalism, but we’re not an old boys’ network and we want to be accessible. But it’s going to be staffed with the people who will stay. What I don’t want are the glory boys, who will just come in for the RSL. We’ve had it already!”

They’re aiming high, and there’s still a long way to go. But if you agree with Lloyd that “the whole premise of independent local radio has died” – just listen to Capital, and weep for what has been lost – then Trent Sound deserves full credit, for trying to put the “local” back into local radio.

Listen to Trent Sound at trentsound.com.

As any Japanese garden designer will tell you, shakkei refers to the principle of “borrowed scenery”, whereby elements of the external landscape are incorporated into a garden’s internal composition. An equivalent approach can be found in Origamibiro’s music, which adds electronically treated background effects to the trio’s playing, suggesting the rush of heavy rainfall, the rumbling of an approaching train, or the cheers of a large crowd. Even when these noises are absent, the music retains suggestions of specific environments.

This sensibility is amplified in live performances, in which sound effects are generated on stage – rustling camera film, a vintage typewriter, a flickering early animation device – and beamed onto video backdrops. Presumably, similar techniques have been used in the recording studio, but the lack of visual clues soon frees the listener from wondering about the “how”, as the ambient textures instead begin to cast their spell.

Initially, these textures are slow, sparse and meditative, with bowed instruments dominating the immediate foreground. Halfway through, a swell of steadily shimmering strings emerges from the stillness, like a sudden shaft of sunlight. Later on, musical box-like tinkles and a repeating two-note interval that could have been lifted from Somewhere Over The Rainbow (“Someday I’ll wish upon a star…”) introduce a sense of nostalgic longing, as if the music was wafting out of dusty crates in a grandparent’s attic.

Experimental but fully finished, ambient yet wholly captivating, this is a truly beautiful piece of work.

For her seventh and latest studio album, Soul UK, Beverley Knight has paid tribute to the British soul music which soundtracked her youth and inspired her to become a performer. “This record is an absolute labour of love”, she told the Post, earlier this year.  “I’ve always banged on about how British soul doesn’t get the respect it deserves, but you have to honour the people who put it in the spotlight in the first place.”

Ranging from early Eighties jazz-funk to early Nineties acid jazz, selections from Soul UK made up a large part of Beverley’s 100 minute set. Appropriately enough, the singer made her entrance with a red, white and blue scarf around her neck. Tying it to her mike stand, she used it as a prop for the rest of the evening, grabbing it and jiggling it for emphasis. Just in case we had still missed the point, an enormous Union Jack was revealed on the back wall of the stage, about halfway through the show. 

As opening numbers go, you can’t get a clearer statement of intent than Get Up!, the 2001 hit which immediately brought half the stalls to their feet. The other half were swift to follow, once commanded to do so. “This is an energetic gig!”, we were warned. The energy levels duly remained high as Beverley, her four piece band and her three backing singers led us through the equally appropriate Made It Back, and into the first selection of Britsoul covers: Freeez’s Southern Freeez, Soul II Soul’s Fairplay, Junior’s Mama Used To Say and the debut single from Jamiroquai, When You Gonna Learn.

The pace slowed for the rapturously received Gold, which led into a lengthy selection from Beverley’s back catalogue. “I want to take you on my own Soul UK journey”, she explained, introducing a medley which went as far back as 1998′s Sista Sista (a welcome revival for one of her finest tracks), and as far forward as last year’s self-explanatory Soul Survivor (when you’ve been in the business for seventeen years, you’ve earned the right to celebrate your achievement).

The main set concluded with a run of hits – Shoulda Woulda Coulda, Keep This Fire Burning, Greatest Day – and then it was back to Soul UK for the first encore: a stunning, gospel-tinged reworking of George Michael’s One More Try. Rocking it up for the final lap, the band tore into Come As You Are, Beverley’s highest charting hit, and a spirited cover of Roachford’s Cuddly Toy closed the show.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed every minute!”, she beamed. “I certainly have.” And perhaps that’s the key to understanding how Beverley Knight has maintained her status as Britain’s best known soul artist for so many years. A natural entertainer to her very core, with a generous spirit and an infectious love of performing, her mission is simply to share that enjoyment with everyone around her. Long may she continue to do so.

Perhaps it was because Infinity Hertz opted to play in darkness – only the drummer was visible, his upper body illuminated by the titchy kaleidoscopic visuals on the back wall – but it was harder to get a handle on what the second act of the night were all about. According to the band’s Facebook page, their stock in trade is “altruistic alchemypop skip-hop shoowave”, so perhaps there’s no point in trying to slot them into a genre.  Still, the silhouetted gloom was an apt match for the dour intensity of the music, and in particular for the doomy, somewhat mannered vocals of the lead singer. In place of Boots Booklovers’ freshly laundered neatness, the five members of Infinity Hertz looked more dishevelled, and perhaps less well-nourished. The first band were cheered on by their beaming mums and dads; the second band were stared at by their cool mates. It was a striking contrast.

Opening with the pounding, piano-led title track from their critically acclaimed second album Cadenza, Dutch Uncles had the suddenly swollen crowd on their side right from the start. Led by the appealingly awkward Duncan Wallis – a tall, twitchy fellow, with the slight stoop of someone who has perhaps become used to dodging low ceilings in poky venues – the Manchester five-piece rattled confidently through their forty-five minute set, negotiating the tricksy twists and turns of their material with consummate ease. Their music bears comparison with the math-rock of Foals, Everything Everything and Dirty Projectors, but there’s a pronounced funkiness to them as well, which stops them becoming too cerebral and dry. There aren’t many bands who could successfully inject rock’s punch and dance music’s groove into a re-working of composer Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, as they do on recent single X-O, but Dutch Uncles are no ordinary band. “It feels like we’ve righted a wrong”, said a delighted Wallis at the end of the set, “because our last couple of gigs in Nottingham were a bit shite”.  They can’t come back soon enough.

You’ve just got back from the States. Has your body clock re-adjusted to UK time?

Yes – although having said that, I was up until four o’clock in the morning. I went for a little stroll at one o’clock in the morning, and found a local restaurant with the lights on. The restaurant owner and the chef were having a glass of red wine, so I joined them for a couple, and picked up on the local gossip.

You’re now preparing for the new tour. Will there be much in the way of new material?

There aren’t any new original songs, because they’re still sketches, but I’ve got an interesting new choice of covers.

You put a shout-out on Facebook for suggested covers. Have your followers given you any useful leads?

They got me looking behind my shoulder, thinking: are this lot in my house? A lot of their suggestions are songs that I love a lot. I could really talk all night with these people.

You use Facebook differently from a lot of people in your position, in that you’ll express what you’re genuinely feeling, rather than just using it as a PR tool. You sometimes post to it when you’re feeling completely sick to the back teeth of everything.  Then your fans will rally round.

Yeah, like “I can’t find my bra – where is it?” Or “Oh my God, look at all this laundry!”  I really enjoy it, because it’s absolute direct contact. They can talk to me, and I’ll respond. I would say that my Facebook meltdowns are now legendary. (Bursts out laughing) The record company are like: what’s she doing? They all follow me on Facebook as well.

That wasn’t anything to do with the fact that you were ill for a bit, was it?

I was ill. It was a big year, and everything went off really quickly, like a runaway train which took me with it. It was going at a hundred miles an hour. And it was great, but the thing about these big long schedules is this: it doesn’t take account of the fact that you’re human.

So if I wake up in the morning and I don’t feel well, and I’ve got to sing for Her Majesty The Queen, I can’t cancel. Or if my boyfriend’s dumped me and I’ve got to go onto Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, then I’ve got to do it. It doesn’t take into account your emotional state – or your tearful state, in fact – you have to fulfil your commitments, in any mood, and be as professional as possible.

What happened to me is that it just built up, and built up, and built up. I was struggling at adjusting to being in the media: being examined, being judged. As human beings, that what we’re all afraid of, aren’t we? Everyone pointing and staring.

Don’t you adopt the classic tactic of just not reading stuff about yourself?

No, I read everything. But I do stick up for myself, when people have been mean on blogs. I’ll go on and say “Oi! That’s really mean! What, all you grown men are going to start picking on little girls?” Ultimately, I’m a human being with an internet connection. I can see what they are saying, and I can go on there and say: what the fuck do you think you are doing?

I know some people will say that’s really stupid. I think I’m the opposite of what people say I should be. They’ll say: don’t get involved, don’t read anything. But if there are ten grown men tearing me to shreds, I’m going to go in there and make them feel bad about it. But that’s very rare. Most people are very nice.

Does touring change your relationship with your songs? If you’re having to perform them over and over again, you must have to enter into some sort of long-term committed relationship with them.

I’ve been in that relationship with them for a long time. As a singer, you commit to every single song, and you have to live the song when you’re performing it, like you were when you first wrote it.

As time passes and as you change, sometimes the emotional connection to the sentiment can get faint. But that’s when you bring in your meditative processes. You just have to go into that space, and almost method-act your own self. Recapture those emotions, find that part of yourself, and deliver it with all the passion that you can find.

When we spoke last year, before the album was released, you said there were angels in all of your songs. So I’ve been looking at your lyrics, and I’ve been searching for the angels.

The angels are on Come To Me High, for example. I was sitting in my room and thinking: I’m so depressed; what would happen if a chorus of angels were to burst into my room, and talk to me? When you’re depressed, it’s very hard to get out of that space. You have to shift that space by wanting to get out of it – by wanting that shift of consciousness.  

And in Thankful, there’s a whole “forest of angels”.

Interestingly, I used to have no idea what it was. Then I realised that my mother was buried in a woodland burial, where you don’t have graves. You have all these different trees, with these little plaques, with people’s names on. And it is literally a forest of angels. I found it the most startling example of channelling. A lot of the most inspired lyrics and melodies were coming from beyond me, and I’m as puzzled as anyone until afterwards.

Before I go on stage, I imagine a circle of angels. I say a prayer, and I call on them. I summon them.

If the person you are now could send a message to the person who spoke to me last year, just before it all kicked off, what message would she convey?

Apart from a lot of practical things, I would say: this will pass. There was a feeling of anxiety around performing live. I got very frightened of big crowds, and I got stage fright. I’ve got much better since then. I’ve learnt a lot, and I’ve overcome that – with the help of my band, and with doctors, and with friends. I’m starting to really enjoy it now.

When he returned to town in February this year, for a sell-out appearance at Rock City, it already felt like he was too big for the venue. “Surely an arena tour beckons for Tempah now”, our reviewer predicted.

Following a massive summer on the national and international festival circuit, Tinie has been taking his first full-scale arena tour all around the UK this month. The night before Nottingham, he had played Wembley Arena , so perhaps our modest 9000-capacity venue was already starting to feel a little intimate.

He certainly had the sound system for a venue of twice the size, for even by Arena standards this was a loud one. Thunderous bass frequencies tore through the hall, making bowels quake and seats vibrate; not really a problem, as there was almost no one sitting in them after the first couple of minutes. But despite whacking the volume knob way past “11″, the sound mixers never compromised on clarity. When live rap does battle with muddy sound, the results can be horrendous, but the dynamics of this show would have put many rock acts to shame.

The star made his entrance in a flash of fireworks, emerging from the smoke in a black track suit with Spiderman-like blue stripes, his face still obscured by hood and shades.  (The hood eventually came down, but the shades stayed on all night.) Tangles of fluorescent string adorned his back, as if he had been ambushed by a thousand party poppers.

The reaction in the hall was so intense, that the crowd never really recovered from it. From the opening bars of the first song to the final notes of the last encore, madness and mayhem reigned. Fists pumped the air, boots pummelled the floor, mosh pits formed and dissolved, and the screams gave even the turbo-charged sound system a run for its money.

Despite making the classic mistake of name-checking Derby at a Nottingham gig – “It’s all about love!”, he protested, as the boos rang out – Tinie delivered a flawless performance, combining a showman’s swagger with razor-sharp lyrical precision. Behind him, the band performed in cages made from tube lighting, which rose from the floor during Let Go and glowed blood-red during Obsession. The usual arena conventions were observed – the “left side, right side, who’s the loudest” pantomime, the acoustic section, the sudden re-appearance at the back of the hall – but Tinie’s Skype video call from Swedish House Mafia was a neat new trick, even if the chances of it actually happening in real-time felt slim. The call provided the cue for Miami 2 Ibiza – or rather “Notts 2 Ibiza”, as it was sung on the night – which sent energy levels to previously unimaginable new heights, putting whole new dimensions of “bang” into Swedish House Mafia’s club banger.

“These are the best days of our lives, whether we know it or not”, he told us, just before knocking us all dead with Written In The Stars. It was a fitting observation for a show that was all about cutting loose, letting go, living it up, and celebrating the moment.

Next time round, they’ll have to find a football stadium for him. And that probably won’t be big enough, either…

Set list: Intro, Simply Unstoppable, Frisky, Till I’m Gone, Wonderman, Illusion, Snap, Written In The Stars, Love Suicide, Invincible, Let Go, Obsession, Miami 2 Ibiza, Hitz, Mosh Pit, Earthquake, Pass Out.