Nico Reviews a secret ahh show - Lolina and YHWH Nailgun at Marble Arch

If you haven't already got with our flipping program, there is a 16 year-old spectre haunting the most tasteful musical events in London and abroad- it's Nico.

He took a trip to Paris to review an Atomiser show (oui!) but its our reporter's hilarious review of the mire of FakeMink that really set hearts alight across the globe.

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The courtyard below the Marble Arch fountains has been fenced off since the year I was born, so it’s a nice alignment of the stars that Hollywood Superstar suggested I report on its Westminster council-approved return into the civic for one afternoon. London is still waking up as the orderly queue of longhairs in band tees descends into the disused exit to the train station; a stage has been set up in the centre of the pit, but everyone stops in front of it despite the staff’s innocuous requests to fill the whole space.

Two metres away from me, Lolina rises onto the stage wearing sunglasses, a thrashed leather jacket, zebra-print trousers and white air forces; it looks like she put on whatever she found littered around Marble Arch. Her mega hit single Gg (remixed by New York) starts playing and she’s already asking cold and daring questions on the concrete dancefloor. She’s expressionless while delivering the hook, “Who’d you throw under the bus? Who might you run over?” Her set is amorphous, covering a range of UK Bass sounds (also briefly recalling Chicago’s footwork) tainted with her trademark Londonese Hypnagogia that is as nauseating as it is ecstatic. If not a smoke filled basement, this dingy pit feels like her home ground.

YHWH Nailgun fist bump each other as they take their positions, only to dillydally with leads and microphones for five minutes. A screeching feedback needs fixing and the singer is teasing us with adlibs. The frontman begins to twitch and wave his mic around like a wand, casting the band to run through their fresh 11-minute album Magazine.

I’m immediately flinching at the drums which are appreciably louder than on the mix of the album. The pitched down rototoms give the drumming a primal feel (he’s also not wearing shoes) that reminds me of binging videos of early Death Grips shows- I saw at least two drumsticks snap throughout the set. The vocalist is certainly matching this ferocity, manically quaking with every unintelligible croon and roar.

It would be nice to see the other two members resemble the outrage of their instruments a bit more; the guitar and synth parts are indistinguishable, combining to resemble sharp sirens and hums of machinery, also merging with the industrial sounds of central London. In The Art of Noises, futurist Russolo hypothesised the modern ear would come to crave the sounds of the metropolis in music; indeed, the quieter moments in which this fusion is apparent feel surreal!!

I think these four New Yorkers should be an urgent reminder, for some of today’s rock bands, that you can still make compelling music when guided by pure intention rather than image (not naming names.)

Fifteen minutes is not yet sufficient to appease an audience and so the band play some old songs, setting off a mosh that carries a few crowd-surfers. The most eager call for an encore I’ve ever heard ignites the one-minute throwback of Hawk Violence which ends at five on the dot, precisely as promised by NTS.

A free show is an irresistible way to lure Londoners back into the exponentially unapproachable circus that is the city’s centre.