Foals, Hoxton Hall, London

When a fellow journalist told me Yannis had promised him ‘violence’ I wasn’t sure what to expect from a man so slight in stature. Maybe it is just a new rock star attitude to go with his new longer locks, unshaven face and scruffy demeanour or maybe, as has been suggested in the aftermath, the Foals frontman was just unhappy with the sound and the technicians assisting him. What is undoubtedly true is that while ‘front men’ and ‘antics’ go hand in hand they definitely stole the limelight from an otherwise superb performance in a brilliant venue.

Earlier in the night Levis’ Ones to Watch had laid on Micachu and Iglu and Hartly at the Macbeth just a few doors down the road, before moving a select few lucky Foals fans barely a hundred yards up the road to Hoxton Hall.

Micachu are hotly tipped by many a set of whispering lips to go far, but need to hone their set before their potential will be realised. Their ramshackle approach is both their biggest gift and hindrance and this is clear throughout their time on lengthy stay on stage. There can be no saying actually how many songs they played as they flitted from short bursts of pop to long jams that in the essence of the Brian Jonestown Massacre take a simple two note riff and run with it. When they are good, they are really good, I am sure in the future they will be even better than that, but right now you need to seetle into the Micachu way of things before you can start enjoying them fully. Once you are accustomed to the Jamie T-esque vocals, the simple DIY percussion and electro sounds you will no doubt enjoy yourself. The problem being that the band, still in their infancy, takes just as long to find their groove as the audience and many had switched off before the better second half. If they had kept their set short and sweet like many support acts they would have left many a member of the audience walking away impressed. At the moment there is potential and filler, both of which threaten to take the sheen off the remaining songs which are more than worth a listen. Whilst they currently have a diluted set you only have to look at the bands on the Levis stage a year ago to know you would be foolish not to back this lot in the long run.

Iglu & Hartly played a much shorter set and surprised many who may have been there to see but one song by turning the volume and therefore the temperature up in the Macbeth as high as they could go. White rappers with ponytails in vests, big hair everywhere, electro synths, hair metal guitar and cheesy hip hop beats are the essential make up of this ensemble. Surely only a band from Hollywood could possibly combine everyone’s favourite worst bits from the 80s and possibly come up with anything this good. Their live set only consists of six or seven songs, but is basically a big party borrowed from a New York basement in 1983 and been left for a quarter century to ferment. They have their sound so nailed on that you could have been dancing badly on the other side of the Atlantic rather than Hoxton Street. There was , as with any band who begin their careers with a catchy hit single, a huge reaction for ‘In This City’ but they still pulled off the rest of the gig with ease. Once the energy begins to fade and the hangovers pass people will realise that this lot actually have a decent collection of songs.

Then there was a pause for breath before the quick skip to Hoxton Hall where a select few (literally) got to see Foals in a secret gig; an area where Levis are beginning to make a name for themselves. When you enter a venue and the first thing that hits you is how small the stage is and the second thing is that the hall is much bigger, then you know you are lucky to see a band like Foals. The edgy pop rock stars of the future kicked off their set in the usual style merging messy improve intro ‘XXXX’ into ‘French Open’ before bringing things back down a notch with crowd favourite number one ‘Olympic Airways’. Forever getting at the sound man to increase the volume the whole band were on form and never did an indie band follow their drummers lead as much as this lot in the cacophony of Hoxton Hall. Their live sound includes a grungier edge to the guitar and vocals from Yannis that are faster and even harder to decipher, both of which lead to a frenzied climax to every song. Unsurprisingly crowd favourites two, three and four come in the shape of ‘Cassius’, ‘Balloons’ and ‘Hummer’ which are only separated by the frontmans need to go swimming with his guitar in a sea of sweaty teenagers much to his technicians dismay. ‘Electric Bloom’ seemed to spark something inside Yannis that had been waiting all night to explode as he tried his luck at launching a drum and his mic stand in the crowd, went climbing, kicked his guitar stack over and then went for the drum kit and the bassist’s stack without any luck before deciding to leave at pace through the crowd. There is always someone out to spoil the party, luckily I don’t think his mischief at the end of the night undid all the good work that had gone before it.