SHOEGAZE

One thing people weren’t doing a lot of during Ladytron’s support slot, a shimmering, feedback-drenched set from New York’s Asobi Seksu, was gaze at their shoes. Frontwoman Yuki Chikudate, a stony-faced dainty doll of a girl, kept her small crowd hooked with a minimal and mean performance, while James Hanna’s guitar blurred and roared behind her.

Pouring a syrupy, celestial vocal over the top of Hanna’s distortion and warm drone, they revisited the crashing guitar pop of Japanese-language ‘New Years’ and the sublime reverb-romance of ‘Thursday’ from their last album, Citrus, before dropping in the itchy, pretty ‘Me & Mary’ from next February’s Hush. Even with the battering drums and fuzzy chaos, it still wasn’t quite the unleashed climax their set needed, until ‘Red Sea’, a My Bloody Valentine-echoing roar of quiet-loud-quiet, perfectly showcasing the fragile meets violent sound.

Then, just as it looked like the band were leaving the stage to make way for Ladytron, Chikudate stopped serenely to sit behind the drum kit, before losing her cool, arms and hair flying around her in a blurry two-minute explosion. The combo of calm versus the storm was sweetly sublime.