A semi-abandoned café, bring your own booze, donation entry, crusties, arties, old men with harps. THIS IS THE UNDERGROUND MUTHAFUCKERS.

The Stig Noise Soundsystem start as we’re likely to go on with intense, overwrought sounds. Based around brass and drums, it’s a fast improvised exploration of something approaching tribal doom jazz. As they batter their instruments with force and feeling, there’s the odd wonderfully brain-searing moment, but there always seems to be something of the hit and hope about the Stig. When it’s good it’s very good, they know their shit no doubt and they can’t half play, but it’s perhaps too much music of the head for this writer.

a.P.A.t.T. approach, as ever, in the unique white overalls that lend them an air of having just escaped from a nearby psychiatric unit. They test the water with various exploratory sounds till they find each other and things really start to kick off. Despite having equal intensity, they’re less heavy and more humorous than Stig. They’re also more lyrical, each song sounding like a nursery rhyme as directed by David Lynch. Squeaky scoots, eerie asides, ridiculous rhythms, a touch of the east and the odd streamlined gypsy jig. It’s all in their folks, and the packed-in crowd starts to get into step after a while, even if this whole show is like looking at the world through someone else’s glasses. Light-fittings are swung, people stand on tables screaming or lie on knackered sofas snogging and a cardboard spaceship is flung the length of the building.

At times it does feel like we’re veering too much into a ‘happening’, in particular when an a.P.A.t.T. member displays a mad-looking picture book to the audience and starts shouting and turning the pages while a piano-accordion gets played in the background. But despite the craziness, there’s a total lack of pretension, and every single action on stage just feels right.

The crowd reduces for non-locals Gay Against You (pictured), but as tonight’s headliners walk on to ‘All Night Long’ by Lionel Ritchie, the remaining audience dance enthusiastically to it. They’re possibly under the misapprehension that they’re being ironic, but we know they just fucking love it don’t we readers? Because it’s fucking great. G.A.Y. intervene and start singing along, dressed in beach t-shirts and random bandannas. Outside of Mello Mello they would look odd; in here they’re just another face in the crowd.

Gay Against You’s sound is made up of discordant, bashed guitar and sheer keyboard violence. It’s twisted playschool electro with too many notes to mentally process. Would I buy the record? Probably not, but this is a wonderful visceral performance experience. That’s what you have to tell yourself as the two semi-naked Glaswegians covered in gaffa-tape take turns to carry each other about a semi-abandoned café, dragging an unfurling Blue Roll and requesting marriage from any willing participants. And it’s about that point that you also realize that life is worth living, for now at least. We continue; brooms, guitars, lust, magic, freaky dancing, messiness, beer on keyboards, on your knees, on your lap, in your face. Goodnight.