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American music might have dominated this year's musical agenda, but that's about to come to an abrupt end. As pointed out elsewhere in this issue, the terrorist attacks on the States are going to have a profound impact on music over the next few months. Tours are already being cancelled and the chances of seeing your favourite US band fly in to play Britain in the immediate future are almost non-existent. For now, we're all going to have to get by on homegrown talent, which might not be as scary as you think.

Tonight's gig offers two of the more promising Brit bands currently waiting for people to stop writing about The Strokes and the White Stripes. Of the two, Minuteman are the newer (they've yet to release a record) and the more immediately accessible. The brainchild of former Ultrasound keyboard player Matt Jones, they're four angular freaks playing brown, fuzzy pop that sounds like Bowie circa 'Diamond Dogs'. The songs are uniformly fantastic (particularly the surging choruses of 'Big Boy' and '500 Minutes Of Pain'), and even if Matt with his pierced lip and chequed golfing trousers isn't exactly the obvious frontman, they still exude a warped charisma.

Much like The Cooper Temple Clause. By the time you read this, their excellently titled 'Let's Kill Music' single will have become their first Top 40 hit and - who knows? - they might even be allowed on Top Of The Pops. All of which amounts to a pretty amazing story. Especially when you actually hear them.

It's fair to say The Cooper Temple Clause don't really do catchy. What they do instead is murderously intense, vaguely prog noise. Thickset and exotically coiffeured (their haircuts are virtually works of art in themselves), the five of them - swathed in dry ice and strafed by strobe light - rumble their way through dense freakouts with sinister titles like 'Devil' and 'Enemies'. Even though they spend far too much time fiddling with their barnets, by the time they conclude with a ferocious 'Panzer Attack', it's difficult not to have been sucked into their swampy intensity. With American music on hold their time is definitely now. And it's an opportunity they're grabbing with both hands.

James Oldham

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