The Luminaire was packed out for this Leaf showcase, featuring two artists who don’t play in the UK often enough for my liking.  The Luminaire is a wide venue, but with the stage in an enclosed space in the middle, meaning it was a bit of a tight squeeze, and that you could be standing within two feet of someone without actually being able to see them.

Laptop artist Dave Miller (such an unimaginative name, I’m sure he could have done better than that) is a regular collaborator of Triosk and Pivot drummer Laurence Pike.  He played a short supporting set of burble and crunchy loops, sampling castanets and handclaps to make punchy hip-hop flavoured beats – at times it sounded a bit Mouse on Mars, at other times more like Prefuse 73, but without all the extra baggage that comes with his records these days.  It was certainly exerted a strong enough pull to get the head-nodders out from the corners of this oddly-shaped venue.

Another day, another Colleen review.  Ah, Colleen, lovely Colleen, with all her lovely records and lovely cello and loveliness.  Her set focused on the (lovely) soon to be released, reviewed here the other day, Les Ondes Silencieuses.  This meant a very organic, acoustic set, with Cecile playing cello, guitar, clarinet, wind chimes, and a music box; looping snatches barefootedly.   Her music was a lesson in elegant simplicity – no fancy playing, nothing too fast or intricate, even the spinning glitterball was felt to be too ostentatious and had to be extinguished - with the layers of the songs clicking into place with the utmost precision.   Entrancing.

I’m a big fan of Triosk’s recorded work, but I was entirely unprepared for how different they sound live.  While Moment Returns and The Headlight Serenade are both supremely restrained albums, on stage they really cut loose a  relentlessly hard-hitting jazz groove.  Laurence Pike really bosses the show, drumming like Andrew Cyrille sitting in with Autechre – slicing up the beat, squeezing rhythms between rhythms,  all in a blur of sticks, brushes and big hair.  Adrian Klumpes contributed electronic texture for the most part, but when he switched to keyboard he played the Keith Jarrett to Pike’s Jack Dejohnette.  Bassist Ben Waples joined in with some beefy, slow, repetitive figures like those played by Michael Henderson on Miles’ Jack Johnson.

Even the gentle (if skittery) centrepiece of their last album, “Lazyboat” was retooled, and booted to the front line for active service.  Their (well earned) encore appeared to be almost entirely improvised; Pike erected a tower of scaffold around a Klumpes drone, the structure eventually collapsing under its own weight, or failure to observe some fundamental engineering principle.  An energetic and thoroughly energising performance; I can only hope it isn’t too long before they return.