While he's unlikely to ever be caught Morris dancing or cycling to Evensong, there's something effortlessly British about Rodney Smith, aka Roots Manuva.

With his name-checking of cheese on toast and pints of bitter, Smith's 2001 release, Run Come Save Me, was a cheeky tip of the hat to the urban loafer's life in Britain.

The 2005 release, Awfully Deep, is more reflective, turning the focus on Smith's preoccupations with fame, money, fatherhood and a mental breakdown.

At a crammed Concorde 2, Rodney Smith was in a playful seaside mood, punctuating his patter with cheeky exclamations of "Insania!", every time his strobe light show sparked up.

And with an expanded Roots Manuva ensemble powering through a shortish set, there was little he could do wrong for a crowd ready for a good time.

It's probably no coincidence that, by the time Manuva kicked off, the stage was visible only through a thick haze of blue smoke and, while it's unlikely you'd ever actually lose sight of Roots, you could always feel the bass - an infrasonic growl which turned the stomach and rattled the fillings from your teeth.

For openers there was a quickfire round of new tunes with the odd crowd-pleaser from Run Come Save Me dropped in for good measure.

A muscular, driving Awfully Deep only lacked shooting flames from the drum riser, as the backing trio rocked out with a much looser electric interpretation of one of the album's weaker tracks.

Overall, this was much more than a by-the-numbers regurgitation of new material.

Most effective was the stomping Munich Discotheque version of Collosal Insight and a symphonic rendering of The Falling, the story of a cuckold planning slaughter, against a seamy backdrop of brain tumours, cocaine and STDs.

The live performance played the narration as a casually unhinged snarl against a tuneful chorus from What Becomes Of The Broken-Hearted?, backed by a chord progression which, complete with harpsichord, was last played at the coronation of George II. Easily the best thing I've heard this year.

The finish of the set became very end-of-pier, with a raucous singalong to Dreamy Days, while the encore saw a reluctant Smith giving up a can of bitter and the Racing Post to lead the crowd with a left vs right chant into Witness The Fitness.

A truly British affair.