The Dials / The Needles @ Cabaret Voltaire

Free gigs are like free sweets, or free beer, or free ham - you've got to be a bit stupid not to go, really. This is why the ligging little hacks who write about music always look so smug (as well as jaundiced and sick), it's because they can't remember the last time they paid for a gig ticket.

Tonight's Duty Free gig, part of a series of shows at Cabaret Voltaire promoting fresh musical meat is not only gratis, but features cheap beer too. Virtually free beer, two free bands - your problem is what exactly? There clearly is some sort of problem, as tonight, only about one hundred folk show up. Which is even more ridiculous on many levels when both of the bands deliver tight-as-heck sets of wired up guitar-y joy.

The Dials are up first, all of eighteen years old, and brim-full of teenage chutzpah and vim. Sounding considerably meatier than previous gigs (no mean feat for a three-piece), there's a swagger and a confidence in the songwriting and the performance that just shouldn't be there in a bunch of precocious kids who, the last time they played, weren't legally allowed to be in here. They rattle through a good length set, and finish on Ding Ding, a thrumming little gem of a tune that deserves to get out there in the wild and cause the sort of trouble it's clearly capable of. The Subways rang them up the morning of this gig and gave them the support slot at T On The Fringe, so that'll help there. Grand work all round, have another beer and write their name down on a beermat in case it gets forgotten later.

Aberdonian razor-pop merchants The Needles duly stomp on for the second half, and prove that giving something away for free doesn't make it worthless. Just a few tracks in, and if anyone's not promptly hooked by the relentless Buzzcocks-meets-Buddy-Holly attack, then there are things wrong with their souls that only the clergy would understand. Absolutely inch-perfect in the delivery, and with an uncanny knack of concocting hook, energy and fun, The Needles should be top of your shopping list.

Just shy of an hour and a half of free music, two absolutely corking Scottish acts, and some cheap Brazilian lagers. There are half a million people in Edinburgh - so shame on the 499,900 of you couldn't be bothered. But tonight, as a sick and jaundiced hack, it's refreshing to look smug for a completely different reason. [Alex Kirk]