Today they appear as a solo act with the other half of the keyboard duo doing something or other in Japan for a few months. John Fischer's ego, however, makes up for this and he does his best to replace his bleach blonde counterpart Tyler (who is he here in spirit, as an iPod, filling in the gaps). Last time I witnessed the duo here at the Sub Club the sound was suffering greatly. DM!PD! greatness is in their simplicity; with no beat or vocals it at first makes you feel empty, but then the solidarity of it all sets in and you're sucked in, waiting, eager for the next note to be played. It's utterly cinematic. Closing your eyes and listening makes you feel trapped in a Lynch masterpiece waiting for something truly horrific to happen. The last song of the set gives way to some semi-improvised, chaotic and quite noisey sounds. The effected manipulations gives perhaps a glimpse to future work being less structured and perhaps more erratic in nature. What is also nice about this band is the unpretentious banter in between songs that other po-faced noise bands truly lack.

Arrows are an odd choice in the middle of this line up. With A Place To Bury Strangers at the higher point of noise extremity and DM!PD!'s minimalism at the lower point of extremity, there is nothing extreme about Arrows' music. But maybe they do fit in... A slighly dull middle ground.

Surely there has to be some bands that can write songs that can cut through the novelty of the majority of bands in this 10 second attention span, Skins generation. Arrows won't be the one to do it unfortunately. Sure, there are some nice pop hooks, the obligatory catchy lyrics and yes, they're a pretty tight band... But sadly there is a slight lack of urgency in Drake's voice and the rest of the gang, who spend the majority of the set staring at their feet, look a little disinterested by what is one of the best turn-outs for the failing Luton Club NME for some time... When Drake mumbles something about "doing something different in this town", I start to smell a little whiff of arrogance about this band. Hopefully the extremity of A Place To Bury Strangers will shake this out and they can continue to develop some stronger songs.

Currently puzzling-ly unsigned New Yorkers A Place To Bury Strangers are a strange band to be playing Luton at the regular Thursday Club NME. The normal gaggle of teenagers has been replaced by a beard stroking crowd. The only real way of describing A Place To Bury Strangers is "LOUD". They play a variety of material, some that has been knocking around as demos and others that's quite new and even with semi improvised noise parts at the end. There is some very obvious influences of shoe-gazing bands but they are so much more that this. Their distillation of noise and song structure is quite unique, with the vocals very low in the mix it's hard to make out the lyrics but it does add another layer of sound to the band. Without getting into geek territory it's very obvious from the feedback and distortion present they have some very individual guitar processing. I later find out that they do indeed make a lot of their own pedals for the guitars.

While the music never reaches a soulful, warm place like My Bloody Valentine, it is possible to close your eyes and let the distortion wash over you, either peacefully or perhaps the opposite if you're not that way inclined. What keeps the songs together over the constant racket is the rather minimal drum setup, thankfully never reaching tribal the drums are quite well placed. The last song is utterly mesmerising, it lasts a good ten minutes and is accompanied by some heavy light strobing. The audience laps the spectacle up.

More like this in Luton please.