The Scala was full and the line outside, long. It was a weird crowd, not what I expected in the slightest; made up mainly of middle aged, balding, paunchy men wearing polo shirts, mixed up with some younger’uns and other regular Jills and Joes who’d finished work at the office not a few hours earlier. I can’t quite remember what I was expecting to see from Simian Mobile Disco duo James Ford and Jas Shaw, but on sighting the set up on stage – some mad scientist’s mini lab – I wondered how SMD were going to present themselves and their music in this ‘live gig’ format.

Neon blue lights began to glow and signalled the kick off. A Daft Punk feel came with the light show, all highlighter colours. Despite being the best light show I’ve ever seen, it wasn’t particularly exciting to watch otherwise, being a gig format and not a club or even a danceable situation. It did occur to me though that surely not that much twiddling was needed?

Not that I’m particularly knowledgeable about that kind of thing, the fact also is that it was the first ‘live’ purely electronic ‘gig’ I’d ever been to; similar acts I have seen were in a club format. This light show was the absolute genius of the set; cleverly designed to take to obscure vision of Ford and Shaw as they twiddled about on their circular set up, giving the crowd a view of their bouncing silhouettes. Ford did all this with an injury to boot, adjusting dials with only one hand whilst the other was in a sling.

Props to SMD for being able to keep the attention of a mainstream consumer audience for an hour or so; they are masters of a consumable build up and play the dynamics game with panache. They had better be good at it after all! If only it was at a grimy club or in a dance arena.

Maybe it was the audience that didn’t sit right, as it was strangely conservative, made up mainly of middle-aged men with m(anb)oobs. SMD play music that’s about losing yourself and just getting messy on the dance floor. The crowd instead were relying on being told to have a good time and not just doing it themselves - which is why the dynamics game played such a big part. The tunes were hot, but the crowd and atmosphere were unfortunately more Simian Mooby Disco than Mobile Disco.