Islet – The Lexington, London 16/11/11

After a brief pause in their recorded output of late, the glorious Islet are back on the road, showcasing an even wilder exaggeration of their frenzied, psychedelic compositions. The Cardiff four-piece are a band notorious for their luxuriant, frenetic live performances as they are for their more reclusive ways of dealing with press and all social media matters. Yet while their recordings remain wonderfully shambolic and, until very recently, wholly self-recorded, there is nothing remotely scruffy about their production – it’s controlled chaos that outpours most visibly in their performances.

The lore and magic that encompasses an Islet live show is its necessity for audience interaction – willing or unsuspecting – throughout. Tonight they begin with a sequence of handheld chiming bells in and amongst the crowd, barely audible at first until their movement alerts the room to their presence. One by one Emma, Mark, John Thomas and Alex take to the stage and assemble with their chosen instruments – for now at least.

Mark commences the set with an intense ensemble of vocodered vocals, eerily singing the words “You are a Romeo” in his deep bass voice. Next Emma kneels on the floor, as Alex switches to bass, as Mark chants, “Shadows cover my face.” There’s dual drumming on display from the very start, another of Islet’s much-loved trademarks. As the first song ends, Emma pulls the crowd forward, closing up the gap between members and audience, something that allows their full intensity to permeate The Lexington’s surroundings, particularly as they begin a loud, bluesy track, complete with frenetic guitars and an organ ending that shows off just how versatile and varied they are. With a lack of space between songs, each new track swims into the next and blurs any semblance of defined genre, beginnings or endings. It’s to Islet’s credit that the audience are as responsive to their new material as they are to their older, more familiar songs.

After this series of unheard tracks from the band’s long-awaited debut album Illuminated People comes ‘This Fortune’, the latest song to be debuted by the band. Its opening drumming intensifies the audience’s rapture as their ears pick out the first faint waves of familiarity as ‘This Fortune’ incorporates Islet’s characteristic primal chants and schizophrenic drumming with renewed cohesion. A track that sees bassist Emma take over the majority of the vocals, from soft alto verses through to swelling, soaring soprano choruses, this particular song sees her very much becomes the front woman, as her moves, and assured vocals cement the band’s own faith in their new material.

Older track ‘Horses And Dogz’ comes next, its thunderous bass line the catalyst for the chaotic movements unfolding on stage. Here Islet very much reinvent themselves as their older incarnation, a result, perhaps of their comfortable familiarity with the songs and it’s in these that they really come alive. Mark begins to clamber all over the speakers and proceeds to poke the front row his his drum sticks: Alex starts to bash his drums sticks against the amps above him. The drumming erupts, before Emma takes over the kit from JT for the remainder of the show, rather than their hitherto practice of switching endlessly between songs, another trick that shows their set’s growth and renewed structure, without compromising any of the excitement.

After their first and only pause, 45-minutes into their set – where Islet talk with warmth and humour and genuinely remark “What are you all doing here when Frozen Planet’s on TV?” – the band recommence with the doom-laden introduction of Wimmy opener ‘Dust Of Ages’. The off-kilter vocals and cacophonous harmonies collide with prolonged organ notes and the reappearance of those initial chimes, bringing a change of pace and dynamics to tonight’s set list. Penultimate song, and live favourite ‘Iris’, contains a unusually prolonged introduction, complete with two tambourines and jarring guitar notes, and the song gets more and more manic as it progresses until ultimately the four of them stand up and scream in their audience’s faces. The band end their tremendous hour-long set with another new song that they introduce as ‘The Bear’, its plodding keys intro suiting its title. With its two opposing keyboards, initial lack of guitars and frantic instrument swapping, this final song encapsulates all of Islet’s eccentricities, energy and oddness into one.

Islet are a band about the break into more widespread public consciousness, on the very cusp of even brighter things to come. Despite the musical intricacies and intense attention to detail in their entire performance, throughout the set you can see them laughing, and genuinely having fun while they’re at it, particularly as Mark ends his set appearance by diving face-first into the audience and crawling on the floor bare-backed.

It’s always exciting to see one of your favourite bands play unheard songs before the record is released, and even more so when those songs prove to be absolutely phenomenal. And as the band’s first exposure of new material, the tracks showcased from Illuminated People tonight whets your appetite for that long-awaited debut full-length even more, while simultaneously showcasing themselves as not only one of the UK’s very best live acts, but one of the UK’s best underrated bands.