The Unwinding Hours @ Stereo, 5 March

Push the stylus down during your favourite Fucking Champs number and you’ll damn near hear Holy Mountain. Drummer Pete Flett’s limbs flail faster than the camera can catch while the two-headed beast’s guitarist stands – foot clamped to the stage monitor – clad in headband and wife beater garb, both hell-bent on inducing tinnitus with a slew of doomy stoner rock freakouts. A parting nod to Indiscretion #243 leads us neatly into unfinished business...

When your first headlining gig’s a sell-out, it can only bode well for the future. But when your last band was one of the more underappreciated Scottish acts to emerge in recent times, it’s an overdue acknowledgment of hard graft. The conjoined proverbial phoenix in the room – Craig B and Iain Cook – rise from the smouldering embers of Aereogramme as The Unwinding Hours; they claim a hush over Stereo, only broken by the sound of a barman shuffling ice into a plastic tumbler.

Borrowing Olympic Swimmers' rhythm section to flesh out the live incarnation, what unfurls is a detailed approximation of the duo’s accomplished self-titled debut under the moniker. Whereas the more schizophrenic nature of B and Cook’s former band sometimes threatened to derail it live, The Unwinding Hours appear more determined to keep a crowd transfixed in its reverie. Shimmering and slow-burning, songs like Peaceful Liquid Shell and Tightrope ebb further toward the orchestral euphoria that My Heart Has a Wish... set course for. The unassuming frontman validates a parting reprisal of an old b-side (The Art of Belief) by playfully joking about (ex-Aereogramme drummer) Martin Scott's reluctance to play it. What a joy to see this new band find a way. [Dave Kerr]