Live Review: Radiohead, Connan Mockasin

Five oddly-clothed young men – all dressing gowns, muumuus and frocks – are dotted within a clutter of instruments. Fronting these freaks is bottle blonde Connan Mockasin, a left-field New Zealand performer who creates the sort of stretched-out jams that would suitably soundtrack a cone-piece emptying. Delivering 15-minute psych sprawls is a risky game, especially to a massive room of strangers; however, Mockasin knocks it out of the park. Driven by the Keith Moon mentalism of sticksman Seamus Ebbs, the jams sound fantastic through the massive PA system; plenty of weirdness for the chin strokers yet accessible enough for the people simply hoping to hear Creep.

Walking out to a sheet of screams, it's clear from the opening minutes of Lotus Flower that Radiohead are committed to making up for lost time. The game-changing Englishmen are visceral, outward and, dare it be said, joyous. Tautly-hung screens drop from the roof and bar codes flash above, the whole setting an aural feast for eyes and ears. Phil Selway's kit faces the set-up of touring drummer Clive Deamer, the rhythms going head to head, helping to bring the intricacies of recent tracks such as Bloom and Reckoner to life. As Colin Greenwood holds court between the two kick drums, brother Jonny, the boyish-looking 40-year-old, relinquishes his guitar role sporadically, manoeuvring around from a bank of synths and samplers to a snare at the front of the stage. And when he does pick up his six-string, he doesn't so much play as hack at it abrasively, the complete other end of the spectrum to Ed O'Brien's considered lines. But if Radiohead are the religion, Thom Yorke is without question the messiah. The diminutive frontman is in a playful mood; joking with the audience and his bandmates, while losing himself completely during Staircase and Feral, releasing into convulsive dance moves like a coiled spring unloaded.

Lighting-wise there's moments where you're wired into the ether of an optic cable: some where you're swimming through the mainframe and others where it's like you're standing on the scorched surface of the sun. And it's these additions that allow you to walk through the forest with the band on There There, and the same that turn The National Anthem into such a violent journey of bass compression. The band remove themselves for a small interim following Bodysnatchers before a fan-favourites encore that includes Pyramid Song, Paranoid Android and Street Spirit (Fade Out); they do the same again for 15 Steps and a pulsed-up Everything In Its Right Place; then, they return a final time for a mesmerising Idioteque, the real sound of the jilted generation.