'Treading the line between creativity and pretentiousness'

Despite this, Gideon Conn, Manchester-based hip-hop artist and first on the bill last Friday, was the spirit of affability personified, and was incredible. Like a Haribo-filled five-year-old being driven to Disney Land on Christmas Day, he was all hyperactive grins and banter touching on the nonsensical - even his backing band looked for most of the set as if they couldn’t quite believe what he was doing. His comedic demeanour, however, belied his skills as an MC, tight in content and deliverance, as his lyrics bounced over the summery grooves and straight-up beats.

The set highlights were two a capella numbers, one about the wonders of electricity and the other about the night's headliners, including the lyric “of course you may leave early, if you think they’re shit / but they’re not because they’re Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip.”

A large TV appeared on the stage along with Peggy Sue and the Pirates, later revealed to be part of Scroobius Pip’s attempt to make the gig more homely by bringing his living room to the venue. The female duo worked their way through a set of beautifully harmonised folk tunes, with a teasing trickle of beat boxing. Although initially stunning, a lack of variety in their set meant that the audience’s attention wavered towards the end.

Do you like Dizzee Rascal? Well you shouldn’t, coz he’s shit
Scroobius Pip

After a brief break, during which more living room furniture - an old radio, a hat stand and a grandfather clock with a shiny face - were arranged on stage, Le Sac and Pip strode out to the strains of the Antiques Roadshow theme accompanied by a clunky breakbeat. At this point the ‘being inside their house’ concept was revealed as a cover for dragging the audience directly inside the duo’s heads.

What followed was a frenetic aural and verbal workout, bouncing between solemn lessons in Chemistry (using the periodic table), reflections on the UK music scene (the classic Thou Shalt Always Kill and a cover of Fix Up Look Sharp with the chorus replaced by ‘hip hop is art’, introduced with “do you like Dizzee Rascal? Well you shouldn’t, coz he’s shit”), and poetry dealing with themes of suicide and self-harm. The climax came with the euphoric A Letter From God to Man, featuring a HUGE Radiohead sample (the groove from Planet Telex) and an increasingly irate deity rapping over the top.

As Pip himself admitted, the set as a whole trod the fine line between creativity and pretentiousness, but this was excused by the quality of the performance and because when it went wrong (as did a section using a coat and glove hanging on a hat stand as a partner stroking his chest) he treated it with an affable good grace. It was this attitude that drew the audience in, and held them captivated during beat-free performances of political poetry in between songs. A sneaky thing, affability.

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