Chrome Hoof – Corn Exchange, Brighton 31/10/10

Many hours have been squandered down the decades in a largely fruitless effort to tuck every band into a tidy box, a place where it can happily gambol around with all its musically similar chums – as if such a concept would naturally produce concord and mutual respect. So what to do with Chrome Hoof?

Perhaps incredibly, they’re not the first band to wear anachronistic matching outfits and vault vimfully between Krautrock, jazz, doom metal and disco – that particular flag was planted a decade ago by the perpetually neglected They Came From The Stars (I Saw Them) collective, albeit wearing white robes rather than the ‘Hoof’s trademark silver suits. And maybe TCFST(IST) played a secret Brighton show last week: that’s the only explanation we can think of for why the Corn Exchange is only a quarter full tonight. Indeed, it’s some miracle the venue isn’t overrun mid-set by the city’s hordes of shitfaced Hallowe’en-clad students, drawn Pied Piper-like by Chrome Hoof’s hypnotic motorik roar. Must be the soundproofing.

Luckily a handful of ghouls, Draculae and a female Alex from A Clockwork Orange (plus, y’know, some people wearing normal clothes) have shown up to bear witness, because you get the feeling Chrome Hoof might lack in purpose without an audience to bounce their ideas off. Frontwoman Lola Olafisoye doesn’t sing so much as yelp and issue commands – “put on your space suit”, “slice it, cube it if you like”, “first, step into your mind” – but that doesn’t stop her channeling Grace Jones and Siouxsie with ease, alternately running and prowling round the extremely full stage while her numerous bandmates bash, tease and wring out her commanding theme tunes.

It’s as if disco started with PiL’s ‘Fodderstompf’ rather than KC’s Sunshine Band, and in that darkly joyous universe Chrome Hoof reign supreme. They twist the 4/4 beat into unexpected yet still danceable shapes, all the while peppering proceedings with power chords and, at one point, a well-placed bassoon. Sometimes the violins approximate Sabbath playing Satie, others see the spectre of Ram Jam’s ‘Black Betty’ floating across the room from bassist and founder member Leo Smee’s neon-lit axe – an event that prompts two audience members to start a game of leapfrog. I swear I hear a snatch of what can only be described as progressive 2-Tone just after the gig-end stage invasion; to witness Chrome Hoof is to experience one of the 21st century’s finest, most impressively resourceful rhythm sections at work.

Admittedly, at various points tonight it’s hard to shake the image of Spinal Tap’s ‘Stonehenge’ from the mind, but strangely that’s nowhere near a criticism. For all their occasional forays into gloopy, green-hued Ozrics-prog territory, perhaps Nigel Tufnel’s immortal “no one knows who they were, or what they were doing, but their legacy remains” is the most we could hope for Chrome Hoof’s electrometaljazzplosion. On the strength of tonight’s performance – unmissable by all but everyone who missed it – they should be part of some sort of musical National Curriculum along with Devo, Faith No More, John Coltrane and Silver Apples. That, at least, is a box they might fit into.