Like the first snowfall of the year, live looping is a minor miracle that never fails to impress. Theo once again proves how useful a tool an infinite delay pedal can be in his opening bars, twining thick guitar lines together to create a wiry cord of dense riffing. Then he drops the guitar and starts slipping some chunky drums behind the loops. The resulting noise is clinical but remorselessly insistent and effective, something akin to AC/DC tunes under construction on the Cowley car plant’s conveyors. A secret part of us wonders what it might sound like if we could have drums and guitar at once (you know, like a band), and whether there might be another way of ending a piece than simply overloading the pedal and puffing out a hiss of white noise but this ultimately feels like cavilling. Go and see Theo, his music repays the patience needed to watch its genesis.

Adventurous locals might like to think of Action Beat as a cross between The Corvids’ kraut thump and the fuzzed reproach of The Fencott Disaster. The aural density of the thunderous noise initially excites, but the (unreasonably short) set ultimately fails to convince: it was too regulated to be an eviscerating noise, but too messy to succeed through hypnotic repetition. You could have the time of your life watching Einstellung or Ascension, but it appears that they don’t mix well.

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we go any further: Ashley Marlowe, Charlottefield‘s drummer, is phenomenal. He powers into the kit with force yet restraint, and the contrast between prog embellishment and punk incision reminds us of Karl Burns’ work on the first Fall album. Frankly, for the first ten minutes of the set we barely noticed the rest of the band. Eventually our senses returned to normal, and we discover that the band make a most pleasant sound, shot through with flashes of Fugazi and tiny flecks of Part Chimp whilst a monolithic bass gels it all together. However, just as we had them pegged as a riotously adept and entertainingly generic alt.rock act, things start to shift. Slowly the music is changing gear, until finally we are left in the midst of endless deserts of guitar tones with deft cymbal flicks dancing above them. After a simply wonderful set, it’s easy to see why Charlottefield are always so welcome in Oxford, and we wonder how we’ve managed to miss them before.