Tuesday 17/01/06 Beautiful New Born Children, Sunny Days Set Fire, Ampop @ 93 Feet East, London

Despite obvious similarities, it would be wrong to discount Icelandic three-piece Ampop as nothing more than a Radiohead wannabe band. Tunes like ‘My Delusions’ do bear a striking resemblance to that so-called ‘slit your wrists’ brand of music, but amongst these melancholic tunes come smatters of fierce rock, moments of sublime tranquillity, and even unexpected marching band-style interjections. As the name almost suggests, this is ‘pop’ for the a.m - front man Biggi’s powerful vocals and tenderly strummed acoustic guitar gently wake up tonight’s crowd, before Jon (drums) and Kjartan (keyboards) pull back the duvet and open the curtains with a blast of furious power, eliciting a warm response from the audience. If Ampop gently start your morning, Sunny Day Sets Fire are like waking up from a horrible nightmare. Their painfully inoffensive lyrics about rainbows and clouds are accompanied by unimaginative ‘pop’ guitars and drums Things worsen with the introduction of a French horn, glockenspiel and trumpet, but things look up as the drummer and lead singer trade places, and the band reverts to a simple singer, guitar, drum 3-piece, with the drummer wailing her way beautifully through a blues/rock number.

Beautiful New Born Children’s recent album ‘Hey People’ is all of 25 minutes long. As the band explode onto the stage, it’s obvious why. BNBC play fast. Really fast. So fast that any attempt to dance to most of their songs may result in a broken limb or two. Their brand of psycho-billy rock is raucous and energetic, reminiscent of The Stooges or The Cramps. And Michael Beckett screams/sings with an intensity that oozes Raw Power. He sounds disappointed as he announces "time for a slow one" (which, incidentally, is still faster than your average band), but retains his screeching delivery throughout. But with these slower tracks suitably out of the way, the punk rock onslaught really begins.

Amongst the blur of white noise, searing guitars and thumping drums, you can make out lyrics about primordial rock concerns – essentially not caring about much at all. And the sentiment seems genuine. To look at, BNBC are nothing special - four middle aged rockers, relentlessly thrashing away at their respective instruments. But Beckett plays on this, goading the audience with jibes such as, "you all must be younger than us, coz young people wont dance anymore, right?", a challenge that is met with a sudden rush of people to the front of the room, and the start of a mini moshpit.   

The album title track, ‘Hey People’, proves so frantic that even the band’s own drummer struggles to keep up, but after a false start, the song turns a previously placid crowd into a sprawling mass of hair and limbs. The last song of the evening, ‘Tic Tac Toc’ is introduced as a, "song about time". Predictably BNBC’s take on time is no more than a minute and half long, albeit another breathless sprint to the finish line. And as quickly as they arrived, BNBC are gone, a lesson in pure noise that is wrapped up neatly in, well, about 25 minutes.