Prog-rock continues its insidious comeback with the return of Electrelane, whose members gathered themselves together from Prague, Berlin, LA and Oxford for a rare live excursion. There's a high-mindedness to the female quartet - who play nine instruments between them - that sets them apart from fellow new-progsters such as the Mars Volta, and all the more so on stage. The latter, afflicted by raging Afros and guitar solos, seem deliberately to model themselves on Spinal Tap in their Jazz Odyssey phase; by contrast, Electrelane do nothing that could be construed as funny.
The show was defined by studious concentration as they set about, in near-darkness, introducing their third album, Axes. This was music for the committed (and there were a lot of them, settled into the parade-rest stance that seems to go with watching instrumental music). Electrelane didn't cut the crowd any slack, presenting an hour of high-density music with barely a pause. It was demanding and - depending on whether you succumbed to its trance-inducing quality - either hypnotic or the kind of thing best left to car adverts. One thing it wasn't was tranquil.
Keyboardist/leader Verity Susman orchestrated such sweeping changes of mood that a song could start out as giddy synth-pop and end up crackling with Krautrock electro-static, while still finding room for a tinkling classical mid-section. Very little was off-limits. Gone Darker combined, to menacing effect, free-jazz and a sample of a freight-train whistle. The Partisan, an adaptation of a French resistance song, and These Pockets Are People were sheets of blaring sub-metal -of the kind the Pixies once loved to inflict. The album had gone on sale only the day before, so everything except the old song UOR was completely unfamiliar, but the intrigue was in following each number to its thrashing conclusion. To that end, Susman and her crew worked as a unit, sombre and purposeful, with no slippage into soloing, self-indulgence or, as previously noted, humour. They could do with a bit, but overall, their quiet intensity made its mark.
· At the Hope Centre, Bristol, tomorrow. Box office: 0117-921 5271. Then touring.
