Fujiya & Miyagi, Audio, Brighton, Tue

3:01pm Wednesday 27th June 2007

It's odd, but every time I go to a gig these days, I find myself confronted by a series of awkward questions I'd rather not face.

Such is the current prevalence of bands borrowing from a variety of earlier sources, chief among them is the consideration of influence and what this might mean in terms of my appreciation.

Of course, this depends upon the particular historical context in which contemporary music finds itself, and there are many examples whereby the resonance of previous work overwhelms the efforts of current bands cursed with having to try and better their antecedents.

At the risk of sounding like a broken krautrock record, Fujiya and Miyagi suffer more than most in the sense they derive much of their sound from bands such as Can, Neu!, and Talking Heads - comparisons they'll have heard a thousand times.

What singles them out, however, is that this doesn't matter in the slightest - they're far too accomplished for that, and their music is genuinely compelling.

Tonight, the nodding heads of the crowd soon developed into something approaching dancing, but the force of the sound was not necessarily in its physicality, but instead in its hypnotic rhythms.

The bass guitar, deftly handled by Matt Hainsby, was responsible for much of this, backed up by tight, insistent drum patterns which could surely have only been bettered by Chris Frantz himself.

David Best's vocal delivery, punctuated by rolling Rs and breathless yelps, possessed an irreverent humour and witty charm (although I'm sure he used to smile a bit more).

If the opening song, Ankle Injuries, was strangely lacklustre, it was more than made up for by what followed, as they steadily increased the tempo, depth and groove (a sound I've decided to call "proto-power-funk"), before culminating in a superb version of Collarbone, with its canny appropriation of Dem Dry Bones incongruously putting me in mind of a bed-bound Michael Gambon.

It was clear from this performance that Fujiya and Miyagi have come of age - a fact the sell-out crowd didn't have to question at all.