Radio 1's Festive Festival, Maida Vale Studios - review - Music - Arts

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A sort of end of year indie X Factor, Radio 1's Festive Festival takes a smorgasbord of new bands championed by the station's DJs, gives them 10 minutes of stage time apiece before a studio, radio and red button television audience and lets the law of the pop jungle take its natural course.

As ever, the result was a hugely entertaining (despite none of the stages being raised) bunfight of the good, the dull and the inappropriate: as the hosts were keen to remind us, Festive Festival 2009 introduced us to Wretch 32 and The Vaccines (both in attendance last night) but nobody mentioned Yuck.

Nodding to Jeff Buckley and Ray Lamontagne, Keaton Henson's painful delivery of even more painful songs ("drink up, so we can both finally die") was the evening's most beautifully fragile moment and he almost ground to a halt when he censored a profanity on Sarah Minor. The pulse-quickening Unicorn Kid may have based his entire career on Oceanic's classic, Infinity, but he may yet entice us to rediscover stadium house.

Dot Rotten (imagine Wretch 32 with the wallop of Streets-esque backing) shows the well of British hip hop talent will not run dry in 2012 and Alt-J were as inspirationally skew-whiff as Wild Beasts.

Elsewhere, Emeli Sandé sounds like a record company's jerrybuilt attempt to unearth the new Adele; T.E.E.D. (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs) was more dull than a man in a Satan suit ought to be and if sweary headliners Bring Me The Horizon's mix of growly vocals, slinky riffs and bouncing like a tattooed Tigger crosses over with their forthcoming fourth album, I'm Father Christmas.

Radio 1's Festive Festival
Maida Vale Studios
170 Delaware Road
Paddington
W9 2