"Where would you rather be? Here or at the Paul McCartney concert?"

For the 200 exuberant, sweat-soaked souls gathered in the interestingly spelled basement of the Roundhouse (where the ex-Beatle played last night), there was only one answer to Jamie Cullum's question. It wasn't "upstairs".

He may have been culpable during that brief, anodyne moment when Michael Parkinson's clumsy taste seemed to control popular music but Cullum has always been edgier than his cheeky chappy persona and grisly standards covers suggested.

Tokyo sextet Soul & "Pimp" Sessions deal in what they call "death jazz" and for the first half of last night's performance, they were alone.

With leader/mascot Shacho in a cheerleading Bez role until he unveiled his loudhailer, they embraced a freeform clatter not wholly dissimilar to London's Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland for all it was worth, particularly on A.I.E. where Tabu Zombie's trumpet and Motaharu's saxophone hurtled into each other with alarming gusto.

When Cullum arrived, Soul & "Pimp" Sessions transformed his conventional album tracks London Skies and Get Your Way into ear-testingly loud John Coltrane-esque avant soundscapes.

They turned The Neptunes' Frontin' and Herbie Hancock's Tell Me A Bedtime Story inside out and finished with The Slaughter Suite, which, as Cullum tried to stop laughing, comprised Shacho shouting "sword" over a heroic racket, more punk than jazz.

It wasn't for the faint-hearted and probably not for Michael Parkinson either.

It's a shame Paul McCartney didn't pop down. He couldn't have helped but enjoy himself.