Musically, visually and ideologically, The Fallout Trust make for a pretty unappealing band on paper. Hyper-intelligent bookworms with the dress sense

of old men (save for violinist Jess Winter), the band confuse lyrically with hidden messages of social injustice, and complicate aurally with music which takes a good few listens to get into.

Starting with new track This Voice Is Not My Voice, frontman Joe Winter went from geek to cult icon as his stretched, reedy vocals rang out contradictorily strong and note-perfect.

Picking up his mic stand, putting it down again, looking at it cross-eyed and accidentally knocking it to the floor, this was a man possessed, with a murderous stare and not a hint of falsity.

Next came former singles Washout, Before The Light Goes and Them Or It, punctuated with more new tracks and favourites taken from debut album In Case Of The Flood.

Even with such paranoid and frantic intensity, the band managed to recreate their discordant sound clashes without striking any wrong notes. Anything which may have sounded like botched musicianship, such as the mistimed intro beat to Cover Up The Man, was definitely no mistake.

Interesting guitar effects padded out the orchestral sound and, using the drum kit as a groove-driving instrument as opposed to a noise-adding nonentity, The Fallout Trust produced a superior version of the orchestral indie-rock genre, nowadays associated with bands such as Hard-Fi.

Refreshingly minus an encore, the set ended with the slow-building new single When We Are Gone. At its final crescendo, when it felt as though The Trust had truly reached their peak, I took a look round at the tiny crowd and saw nothing but open mouths. Maybe there's no place for The Fallout Trust's music in today's culture of image and immediacy, but there's certainly a place in history.