Jenna G, tall, dark and fatiguingly vivacious, bounces onto the Jazz Café stage in a skimpy, shock and awe pink dress.
As she paces the stage, 2D charges behind a 24 channel mixing desk and effects bank, while Darren Lewis takes up position behind his keyboard. On the other side of the stage there's a bass guitarist.
Things haven't started when Jenna blurts "hold on!" into her microphone, using the same tone she'd use to point out something she liked in a shop window.
"The playlist's down the back of my dress", she concludes and begins to reach around her body with her left arm, fishing for a bit of paper that she's somehow managed to tuck into the scarce material.
The hitherto rather too well behaved crowd is reduced to a medieval bawdy rabble united in shrill wolf-whistle as Jenna laughs in an "oooh! Behave, what are you doing that for" kind of way.
Set list retrieved, they begin with the drum 'n' bass of 'Things You Do', rather than one of their modern soul numbers. Jenna's vocals, widely reputed to be the best to come out of the drum 'n' bass scene, are as impressive as her performance is charismatic. The crowd might need warming up, but she's arrived fully charged.
One song in and 'Chinese Silk', a muted jump-up track that doesn't quite match Jenna's description of being "down-tempo", sees the arrival of an elaborately dressed, three women strong string section consisting of two violins and a cello.
It's the cue for a change of pace and ushers in songs such as 'Skin II Skin', which bring us more firmly into Un-Cut's current state of being.
Tracks such as the orchestral and beautiful 'Loveless' and 'Senseless' sound like classic late Sixties/ Seventies Atlantic soul ballads, vocally more reminiscent of Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin than post Mariah warbling R 'n' B, as Jenna powers away from the melody line into emotion driven improvisation.
Conversely the current single, 'Falling', is timeless, tightly controlled soulful summer pop.
It's easy to see why Darren bothered to hang-around and recruit the singer after he caught her by chance at a free concert in Castlefield Festival, Manchester.
But the drum 'n' broken beat of 'Off Key' sees her leave the stage to give the band some room to shake the bass bins. And it doesn't hurt to be reminded that behind the impressive front women is a dynamic, dexterous production team, rolling from Roni Size break beats through finger pop soul to the Dana Bryant style walking jazz lines of 'Music is M'.
Un-cut progress through the genres effortlessly, which spares them from being either contrived or retro-sounding. You can't help but feel Jenna was raised by her parents on a diet of Otis Redding, Tyrone Davis, Al Green and Dina Washington. And you know that whatever records her parents had, 2D and Darren have the unreleased directors cut on shellac.
Drum 'n' bass may be where the band originates from and 'Midnight', which they naturally save until last, might be the track that broke them, but all that has definitely been assigned to their past.
As Jenna says, before killing the pace with the slow-step dub of 'No Way', Un-cut want to "embrace all styles of music".
They are not the first band to hanker after such fluidity and it's a tough career choice to pull off. But for once you suspect it's not going to be too hard for them to take their fans with them.
by Ben Osborne