I didn't take this photo. I nicked it off Kong's MySpace page. I did take photos at the gig but my horrible temporary new phone - a Samsung SGH-U600 - has an awful camera and the photos are just grainy blurs.

Crazy-eyed, boiler-suited and masked up like B-movie psychos, Kong were a fine opening to the evening. Ear-savaging distorted punk and waves of feedback were accompanied by uncanny bouts of wide-eyed, paranoid staring, globs of spit coming out from behind the mask and the odd screamed threat of violence towards the audience. Delicious.

Held at the exquisitely grimy Islington Mill (exquisite, that is, so long as you don’t need to use the loo for having a poo), this was the opening pre-gig to Manchester’s unnecessarily-renamed FutureSonic festival (now called FutureEverything). And when I say pre-gig, I should add that the festival doesn’t actually start until May 12th 2010 – seven months away. So I’m excited, but I’ll have forgotten my excitement by next May.

Anyway, the headliners were Italian trio Zu, who like Kong were very drum-centric. Not as savage as Kong, their music was a blend of avant-garde jazz, math-rock and Rage Against The Machine, and they certainly got me and about six other geeks at the front dancing. ROCK!