Expectations are funny things. They can make people turn against acts they love who dare to defy or cease to meet what is expected of them, or make people suddenly champion previously denigrated acts who excel unexpectedly. They can make reviewers doe-eyed over acts who ‘defy genre boundaries’ and write off incredibly popular acts who don’t. And, in a gig context, they can make an audience overlook fluency, performing experience and musical complexity in favour of the element of surprise. Tonight was a night of expectations defied and confirmed and the rolling-out of musical and performing clichés, mostly unintentionally, in which the most anticipated performance came a poor third to the others.

Holy F**k’s re-scheduled headline set had been eagerly awaited, and the array of kit on display at the start of the night – drum kit, amps and two tables full of electronic toys – suggested those expectations could even be exceeded. Sadly, due to technical failures at the Academy, the gig was moved from the smaller upstairs venue to the cavernous downstairs room where, despite the bands playing on the floor ‘in the round’, the audience barely filled a third of the available space, though they made up in enthusiasm what was lacking in volume. The band’s lineup of drums, bass guitar and electronics called to mind Parts & Labor, though the songs are instrumental, simpler in a krautrock vein and much, much, much slower. It could be argued that they’re too simple, as the bulk of the set consists of great grooves with no hooks – and yes, that may be the point, but it all comes across as an excellent soundtrack to something that’s missing. The tracks chug along powerfully, driven by the bass, but in most cases lack the lift that would bring them up from really good to great. That’s where the expectations come in, and for me they lose points by falling into quite so many hipster clichés in both sound and look. Playing in the round, though it may not have been their choice, doesn’t help, because while it does mean the band is better able to feed off the energy of the first two rows of people, it means that none but the very tall further back can see anything of the band. It’s a shame, as the two guys with the electronics clearly want to be seen, playing with melodica, speak-and-spell and some kind of homemade ticker-tape sampler in a way that sounds much like their other black boxes and noisemakers. It all feels so close to being great, but even their best track, the absolutely majestic Lovely Allen (with riffs as well as grooves!), falls a bit flat in the delivery – the build-ups are longer and more powerful than on record, as they should be, but the kicks don’t quite kick. As a  middle-weight electro-krautrock prospect Holy F**k are worth seeing, and in fairness the small crowd seems to be getting a lot more from it than I am, but the band don’t seem to have any ambition to defy the expectations they raise, good and bad.

Earlier SBTRKT, the tour support, began with so little expectation it was hard to tell whether he’d begun or not. Good workmanlike Ableton techno is his thing, and he seems to be an act fitting squarely within the new cliché of the gigging laptop producer; this guy has the now standard array of flashing knobs and buttons to press and tweak, and it’s even clear to the audience what they’re controlling, which does give a hint of performance, as laptop music is still smarting as a scene from (largely fair) accusations of missable live performances in which the ‘performer’ presses play on their laptop and then checks their email for 40mins. In another token nod to stage presence he augments his hoodie/jeans/trainers look with a faux-carved wooden tribal mask with long straw beard, so it looks like he is trying, but with the bare minimum of effort. Initially it seems like the same is true of his music; it lopes along straightforwardly enough, listenable and certainly danceable, but without much to grab the attention, but it feels like a festival set in that it draws you in to dance without threatening to demand much from you, and then develops gradually over time until you realise there’s much more to it than there was when you started. It’s the boil-them-alive approach to a dancefloor: don’t start at too high a temperature or people will jump straight out again, but ease it up over 35 minutes and take people with you. It doesn’t get the Academy heaving, unfortunately, as the audience is too clearly waiting for the headliners – the teenage hipster couple doing the world’s most fey ‘big fish little fish’ dancing is very sweet – and sadly, like a festival set, at the end it’s been good fun but left no impression that it’s worth going out of your way to see or hear again.

First up though were Coloureds, a local band playing their second gig for which they were only booked a few days earlier, so expectations are attainably low, and quickly exceeded. Like SBTRKT, the duo perform with a laptop and standard issue tweaking peripherals, and their concession to an on-stage ‘look’ is streetwear with two home-made glowing papier-mâché gimp masks, but what they do bring is energy, both in the music and on stage – or on floor, more accurately. They don’t provide what would be expected to go down well as first support for an electronic-tinged post-rock band; they play breakcore-dubstep, hard beats and big thumping samples, and it’s absolutely cracking. It doesn’t exactly set the room alight, but that’s simply because it’s too early and too empty; given the right time and place this will kill. It makes complete sense that these are, as I discovered later, two guys from the now expired local experimental guitar-rock band Xmas Lights, because this is similarly brutal yet accessible. And yes, expectations are leading me to be overly kind; Coloureds are rough-and-ready and want for a bit more experience (and ideally a name that won’t alert the FBI when you google it, and I’m being overly harsh to the headliners, but isn’t that how it should be? Shouldn’t the headliners grab you by the ears and blow the supports off the stage, taking a crowd that’s been suitably warmed-up and kicking it up a gear? I expected less than I got from Coloureds and more from Holy F**k, with SBTRKT falling into the middle with the unfortunate distinction of exactly meeting my expectations of good, functional, forgettable dance music, and I leave the venue happy to have seen Holy F**k and eager to see Coloureds> again.