Off the record: David Smyth

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Break on through: Enter Shikari, winners of NME's John Peel Prize for Innovation, mix frantic rave sounds with thunderous metal

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Shikari's teenage riot

They were tipped in this column earlier in the year; now St Albans quartet Enter Shikari have reached their tipping point. This weekend they play at the Hammersmith Palais, with a second night added due to demand, and in a fortnight their debut album, Take to the Skies, should figure in the Top 10.

At last week's NME Awards, where tediously obvious mainstream contenders romped home in nearly every category, Enter Shikari were the surprise winners of the John Peel Prize for Innovation, despite their music being not so much innovative as insane. It was some recognition from grown-ups, at last, for a band whose bizarre sound seems only to appeal to children.

"We started out playing songs a bit like Muse or Radiohead, but as much as we love that kind of stuff we got bored pretty quickly," says singer Roughton "Rou" Reynolds, who has been making music with two of his bandmates since they were 11. "We all love dance music, so we started putting massive euphoric trance synths over punk tracks, and thought it sounded awesome."

So do the nation's teenagers, the demographic that the band, all now in their early twenties, have successfully courted. They started out playing regular sets in a local youth club, rejecting the only conventional gig venue in St Albans because it was for adults only, and now make a point of allowing 14-year-olds into their gigs. Under-18s are usually officially banned by venues, primarily to avoid them accessing the bar, and although a blind eye is often turned, it is rare for young teens to be made to feel this welcome.

Enter Shikari are not alone in recognising that kids are becoming serious music fans at an ever younger age. Klaxons, a band who fuse rock and dance music to far tamer effect, will play an all-ages matinee show at Shepherds Bush Empire on 19 May, a trend previously followed by bands such as emo kingpins My Chemical Romance.

It makes sense, especially when you are selling a sound that parents are naturally predisposed to despise. Enter Shikari's is the sound of a million bedroom doors being slammed simultaneously, a parent-crushing collision of frantic rave, thunderous metal and guttural roars. When I went to their MySpace page, two songs burst into life simultanously. The racket sounded typical of their dizzying style so I didn't notice the mistake.

"We usually play 25-30 minute full-throttle sets, and at the end of that we're all rolling around the stage in sweat and blood and whatever else. The pace is taking its toll," says Reynolds. "But playing live is our thing ..."

At Hammersmith, they promise to play longer, making more than an hour of mayhem. I'd tentatively recommend the Enter Shikari live experience to older readers, provided you have some headache pills handy. They're not for everyone, but they're too loud to be ignored this year.

AN EARLY LISTEN TO...

Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (Columbia)
In one of rock's most unlikely recent unions, Johnny Marr has been accepted into the ranks of Washington rock band Modest Mouse.
The former Smiths guitarist is just one aspect of a complex sound featuring jerky, gear-changing guitars, horns, folky violins on new track Parting of the Sensory, and singer Isaac Brock's emotional yelps. This fifth album, released 2 April, features what will surely be their biggest hit yet in the catchy Dashboard, as well as plenty of other marvellous moments. This time the Mouse will roar.

VJs hit the decks

Since Disney's Fantasia and that freaky oil wheel when Pink Floyd played the UFO Club, people have been matching abstract images to music. But only now do "VJs" have their own scene, their own bar (the new Roxy Bar & Screen on Borough High Street) and their own festival. Optronica, which takes place at the BFI next week, will see festival organisers Addictive TV remixing Get Carter, and veteran director Peter Greenaway, too venerable to be called a VJ, performing as a "real-time image conductor".

The key piece of kit is the Pioneer DVJ-1000, which allows you to play multiple DVDs as if they were pieces of vinyl, "scratching" them and overlaying one piece of footage with another.

Eccentric dance duo Lemon Jelly will perform the week's highlight, Wednesday's live improvisation of their new audio-visual piece, IOTA: Inventions of the Abstract, in the IMAX cinema.

"You have twice as much work to do in the same amount of time, so there are twice as many things to go wrong," says the pair's Fred Deakin, a former graphic designer. It's going to be a mesmerising sight. Club owners who think they're adding value by slapping 2001: A Space Odyssey on in a corner will be stunned.

• Optronica, Wednesday 14-Sunday 18 March, BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, ICA (020 7928 3232, www.optronica.org).

NEW ON THE NET

The cost of putting out a CD single is barely worth it these days, especially for those acts who won't particularly be troubling the charts. So Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru, the latest solo release from Super Furry Animals singer Gruff Rhys, will only be in download stores from Monday.

Among the bright young things dreaming of a career as lengthy as Rhys's, Birmingham's The Twang are the latest to capitalise on their early buzz. The echoing U2 guitars and baggy beats of debut single Wide Awake appear in download stores on Monday, but before then you can decide whether they're worth the 79p by grabbing a live recording of their song Loosely Dancing for free from .

There's also a buzz around the latest signing to XL Recordings, the ever-innovative home of the White Stripes and Dizzee Rascal. London girl Adele is a soulful singer-songwriter with a hint of Amy Winehouse about her and a free song available to download at .

 

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