The Heavy @ Cabaret Voltaire

If you like us I want y'all to howl like wolves! implores Swaba, chief soul brother of The Heavy, a four-strong troupe on a one-band mission to bring back Da Funk, judging by the monster slabs of the stuff emanating from the Cab Vol stage tonight. And the crowd responds in kind to Swaba's cry, a very primal reaction to very primal music. An intoxicating fusion of the old and the new, they've been described elsewhere as Led Zep fronted by Curtis Mayfield, and that's pretty close to the truth. Sprinkle some hip-hop on top of the chunky riffs and old-skool soul and what you've got is the creation of something celebratory and entirely at odds with the stop-start, jittery indie-rock genre-du-jour. For that alone The Heavy should be applauded. Besides, these songs are built for bigger stages than this and on tonight's evidence it won't be long before they have them. [Barry Jackson]