The Violets
Cissy
Levelload
Artrocker Club @ Buffalo Bar, London
Tuesday October 2 20075

A cellar under Islington, and three bands to do their stuff. It's Artrocker night at the Buffalo Bar, an opportunity for some of the rising noisemakers on the left-fieldish side of the indie scene to showcase themselves under the auspices of Artrocker magazine, which is that rare thing: an independent magazine with its fingers more firmly on the pulse than most.

Levelload must be the only band on the planet to take their name from the side of a skip. They're dressed in skip-yellow clothes, too - what is this, some sort of conceptual thing based on the aesthetics of the waste disposal industry? Fortunately, there's no rubbish here. Levelload wallop the early-doors punters with songs that are all slabs and angles, driven along by a beat box rhythm (there's a girl at the back of the stage who allows herself a faintly embarrassed smile every time she presses the Go button to start the technology) and large chunks of guitar and bass. Up front, Levelbloke on guitar essays some parodic rock star moves (at least, I hope they're parodic) while Levelgirl on bass does a kind of soft shoe shuffle dance step as she plays: it's all a bit whimsical, but it works. Levelload are an odd pop group, but the odd ones are the best, aren't they? At any rate, I like 'em. And that's on the level.

There's something about the name Cissy which rings alarm bells in my head. There's also something about the band's visual style - those bright red trousers, like the self-consciously 'wacky' garb of the presenters of some ghastly children's TV show - that alerts me to approach with caution. Oh, I know what you're going to say. You should never judge by appearances, right? It's unfair of me to condemn the band simply on superficial stuff like the name and the clothes. But you know what? Sometimes, you can make snap judgements like that, and get it right. Sometimes, the trousers say it all. And thus it is with Cissy, who trundle through a selection of modernist jazz-rock instrumentals while grinning benignly at the audience and each other. It's undemanding fun for the first five minutes, and then it's just undemanding. The audience receives them politely, but storms of frenzied applause do not break out. In the end, Cissy just play amiable but undistinctive cinema intermission music - and I for one think it's about time we got to the main feature.

With a bassist in tow, and a sampler to go, The Violets come before us in expanded mode tonight. They're as frostily reserved as ever: no benign grins here, just an attidute that exudes a confident sense of purpose. You certainly couldn't call them undemanding, either: The Violets' music requires a certain degree of positive engagement from the listener. You can't just stand there, chatting to your mates, while it all rinses over you like a shower of rain. It's taut and assertive stuff, nagging at our consciousness like a stone in your shoe, the guitar slapping you on all sides of your head at once.

The presence of real bass, anchoring the music's flights and tangents like a brick tied to a helium ballon, enables Joe, on guitar, to put some space and restraint into his guitar lines, no longer having to fill every last second with sound. Meanwhile, the presence of the sampler allows vocalist Alexis to duet with herself on 'Co-Plax', and all of a sudden we're in the minimalist neo-disco zone, as sequences line up and march forward like soldiers on parade - and the guitar steps right back, taking itself out of the song altogether, then thrusting forward to inject a slash or clang or skitter of sonic punctuation. In a way, this is The Violets being counter-intuitive, because in most respects this band is nothing if not relentlessly guitar-driven. But it shows, as if we needed confirmation, that The Violets have far more ideas in their heads than just the post-punky-guitar-band thing. If this drops a hint at where they're going next, the future's going to be an interesting place to be.

Essential links:

The Violets: MySpace
Cissy: MySpace
Levelload: Website | MySpace

For more photos from this gig, find the bands by name here.