I saw Chromatics last night. Surprisingly they were a lot more muscular than on record. A good thing, as despite being lovely and delightfully languid on record, I feared that in a live context this could have translated as boring and anaesthetising.

Despite being more dynamic live, this didn’t detract from what makes Chromatics so great. There songs are still enthused with emotion and the general ambience of the night: seventies horror films; glitter balls; speeding cars in the desert; darkness and neon.

That said the venue was a bit brightly lit and lacking in atmosphere for my liking and this being Brighton there were too many self-obsessed hipsters, but a large proportion of people were dancing by the end of the show. The sound quality, I have to say, was pretty amazing and when they finished their set with a slow building version, of their cover of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, it met and simultaneously confounded the audience’s expectations, being quite different to the version on Night Drive IV.

There are still plenty of free Chromatics tracks available for free from the bands MySpace.

If only they’d bring a live record out now…

Chromatics – In The City