Dream City Film Club/Smegma

Dream City Film Club/Smegma @ The Boatrace, Cambridge

"It's a cliched old world, Saint", as Jimmy Greaves might've said had he the wit to realise how often he'd recited the same meaningless chod disguised as criticism or, perhaps, if he had to listen to much of the music that passes through here for any period of time. Both of tonight's bands are going their own musical way though, and that makes for some interesting entertainment in a game of two halves (sorry).

Smegma were first up and, having not seen them before and with only the Boatrace gig listing to go on, I was expecting some sequencer-driven monstrous drum'n'bass action. So it was a bit of a surprise to hear the first couple of tracks sounding like a spacey Ozrics kind of thing. Some vocal assistance from Hofman kicked off (ahaha) a more intense, heavy sound though; nasty-sounding TV samples and some dirty guitar on top of the human-dynamo breakbeat drumming. Mostly instrumental, but never straying into muso-jam-wank territory, Smegma are not live drum'n'bass but they are very much worth going to see.

DCFC on record tend towards the darker, seedy, maudlin side of life where things move along with gravitas and melancholic slowness. Live though, they turn up the distortion, pull on their Elvis underpants and turn into a fully-fledged kick-ass rock proposition. All the songs have been cranked up a notch tonight and they're the better for it. Highlight is previous single "Pissboy", a ram-raider of a song, crashing into your ears backwards and speeding out again having stolen your brain.

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