Before we get to take a bite out of the big apple's main event, beginning with first support act, The Oxes, who start as an oh-so-fashionable bass two-piece, thrashing-out beat driven hypnotic rock. Joined by a third member, the band run through a routine of serious post Nirvana rock that at times features guitar lines so discordant they're out of tune. But combined with cabaret antics, including a guitarist who treats speaker stacks as a climbing frame and a drummer who thinks he's a snake charmer, it makes for a powerfully entertaining start to the evening.
Spektrum have been playing continuously all summer and the routine of endless performance has crafted a set that has both raw funkiness and tight and punchy professionalism. Tonight they're on particularly good form, partly because the engineer understands their sound. Songs, such as "Interference", "Breaker" and "Freefall", which require subtle but powerful sound, have seldom been as good. Lola's Ertha Kitt meets Grace Jones meets Jill Scott vocal performance radiates star quality as she twists to the band's equally contorted contemporary funk.
Chk Chk Chk have also been playing relentlessly this summer, and although their act has changed little, they benefit from the space the Astoria stage affords the oversized band. Leading-in with the customary post punk taunting, they jeer "Wake up London" at the crowd, before tantalising them with the words: "This is an old one". The response is a shout for landmark opus "Me And Giuliani…", a plea that is dismissed with a curt: "Not that one, everyone in London always wants that one and we don't know why."
When you've seen Chk Chk Chk on more than one occasion it's hard not to see how stage-managed their punk show is. But despite this rehearsed structure, the raw energy of their music wins through. Visually their vast number has something of the effect of watching Parliament / Funkadelic at the height of the mother ship connection tours, as a bewildering array of characters parade around the stage, locked-into the same head-nodding four to the floor grove.
A brass section bursts to the front and keyboards scrunch bubbling acid synth into the constant cacophony of bar chord funk guitars. Tracks such as "Hello? Is This Thing On" come startlingly into their own played live. It's powerful dancefloor stuff and soon the mosh pit is breaching its boundaries onto the stage, beginning a cat and mouse routine as bouncers try fruitlessly to control the stage intruders.
For one stage diver, things go horribly wrong when the crowd parts before him and he thuds to the floor - causing the band to momentarily pause in uncharacteristic concern - albeit quickly echoed by album soundbite "not that we give a f*ck". All told, surely one of the best live acts around today.
