Låpsley / Oceaán @ Sneaky Pete's, 19 April

Mancunian outfit Oceaán open tonight, their compositions transformed into gnarly, tangled assaults live. Frontman Oliver Cean on keys, modulating his vocals from soulful keening to warped howls; drummer Ty thwacking both drumpads and an analogue snare. Beats and scraping sounds then collide, mid-air, so coordinated and yet so unpredictably syncopated. There’s a bristling, lo-fi soul to this duo, like the tender Jai Paul or Autre Ne Veut; Mount Kimbie and James Blake get a look-in, too, thanks to the crackling loops and impressive vocal on Cean. But it’s all so heart-wrenchingly divergent from its influences that we, blinking, swoon at its satisfying novelty.

In a way, the noisy support have wrecked the place, and it’s up to the street-smart sweetness of Låpsley to pick up the pieces. Holly Fletcher snuck up on us about a year ago with her ghostly aural minimalism. Since then she’s become a touring band, a little in the CHVRCHES mould (flanked by two dudes on drums and synths) but refreshingly far from any squeaky synthpop. Instead, her sturdy vocal is front and centre, piano by her side.

The set is solid; she falters once or twice, some tracks lacking the polish she’ll soon earn on the circuit. A few songs have pre-recorded pitch-shifting, suggesting that perhaps even Station will suffer the same automation. But to close, she grabs a second mic for that staggering one-person conversational duet. “Well I will ring you up / Say I want you back,” she sings to herself, an androgenous baritone, “I could walk you back to the station,” she loops back, pained. At only 18, Fletcher is tonight’s siren of the rocks. [George Sully]