As the epic electro tide of M83 rears at your senses, the last thing you should probably be doing is musing over the design of Heaven. Chatting to a minor celebrity, infamous for almost destroying the marriage of one of dance music's knackered icons, is next on the list.
But this is a true story, and unfortunately, despite M83's bid to take dotmusic on a fantastical flight across volcanic skylines, tonight we are left to dissect the realities and nod sagely at the observations of another unmoved observer. The out-of-body experience can wait.
M83 explore the kind of flaming electronic instrumental rock music you might encounter if Mogwai, Kraftwerk, Air and Godspeed! formed an avant-garde supergroup, with My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields at the production helm. Recently released debut LP 'Dead Cities. Red Seas and Lost Ghosts' is a turbulent, emotive gale of soul-kissed sound and vision. However, tonight that record is witnessed in black and white, one speaker down.
The French four-piece thrash elegantly and with purpose, but frustratingly lack the kinetic intensity and drama of the record. In their bid to claim the future, they actually leave themselves sounding rather dated, like a goth-drunk Death In Vegas, minus the vocal heavyweights. Which is hardly a career-defining position to find yourself in.
The Rapture, meanwhile, have no truck with mediocrity of any kind, and are pioneers in a scene of one. Indeed, so uniquely flash is their sound that both the dance and rock kids pouring into Heaven tonight swallow both an unlikely confrontation with a metal detector and a midnight kick-off to greet Jenner, Safer, Andruzzi and Roccoforte.
As cutting-edge as a glinting blade on skin, the Hoxton glitterati have sent out their crack team of insouciant detectives to suck on The Rapture's ice-cool vision. And no wonder. In these days of spunking the farm on any bunch of retrograde dumbf*cks capable of holding a guitar whilst continuing to breathe, they've melded a bunch of timeless sounds and styles into a scabrous, vigorous and unlikely new whole.
Opening, rather perversly, with 'Infatuation', the death rattle closing track from 'Echoes', the morose cloud is quickly blown apart by the band's double-barrel, disco-punk-funk shotgun. The magic of The Rapture lies in their marriage of so many, supposedly mutually exclusive, components: guitars and sophisticated movement of the feet have, in recent years, got on about as well as Michael Jackson and Martin Bashir. Aligning twisted saxophone with brutal axe work, thumping house alongside uprooted, lovelorn despair, the distant spectre of Duran Duran and the Happy Mondays. What sort of madman would create this beast?
And yet, it so works, the unbridled melee matched by the quartet's infectious, bounding presence. The shuttling disco menace of 'Olio' and the bleeping, hi-hat pulse of 'I Need Your Love' are played-out alongside the decadently wasted romance of 'Love Is All' and 'Open Up You Heart'. However, it's spiky, barbed behemoths like 'The Coming Of Spring', a rabble-rousing 'Out Of The Races', the terrific white noise crescendo of 'Heaven' and the PIL overload of 'Echoes', that are truly all-consuming. Finally - and naturally - 'House Of Jealous Lovers' opens the gates of Heaven.
The Rapture are so now they should be reclassified as a weapon of mass destruction.
