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It’s a beautiful warm early summer evening and I’ve been lured inside the cool confines of the Mascotte with the promise of rare and precious things from Brooklyn buzz band Creep and Brighton buzz band Esben and the Witch, so I reluctantly get my head around being inside where it is cold and dark instead of outside where it is sunny and warm.

Good thing I did.

I admit to thinking that the performative element of DJ/producer duo Creep (Lauren Flax and Lauren Dillard) isn’t up to much chop when they start – two women on stage with their Macs and beat boxes, a lone guitar and a screen for visuals – but by the end of their set I’m a convert. Witch house, drag, haunted house, pop gothic – whatever you want to call it, Flax and Dillard’s mix of trip hop, slowed down beats, and shoegaze haze is mesmerising. The accompanying stark and spectral visuals feature a lot of beautiful girls with great haircuts, as well as some creepy mansions and lighting (Hello, The Shining references in the video for ‘You’ ft. Nina Sky). I had been tipped off about Creep, but didn’t really know anything about them- so it was a complete surprise, of the best sort, to be so captivated. Creep’s final track is ‘Days‘, with The xx‘s Romy Madley-Croft on typically tranquil and textured guest vocals.

The tag ‘gothic’ has been slapped all over Esben and the Witch (including by yours truly, guilty as charged), and although I am well aware EATW are by no means hardcore Goth with a capital ‘G’, I think I was half expecting (ok, hoping) to see a posse of black-lipsticked, wild-haired goth princesses and princes taking over the floor. However, aside from the token guy in a floor-length black coat there is not much visible gothiness to be had. No, the ‘gothic’ tag is relevant for the creepy howling vocals of Rachel Davies (how does she remember which unearthly wail goes where?) and the dark and dramatic rock feast that Daniel Copeman and Thomas Fisher serve up. What could have been merely a bleak cacophony of wailing and fuzzy guitars is lifted by the ferocious bashing of a tom-tom drum by Davies, and sometimes all three band members. They surround it like some kind of ensorcelled ecstatic coven, brandishing their sticks like weapons and beating the crap out of that one lone drum.

I start at the front, but soon move back into the crowd for fear that Copeman’s frenzied dancing will propel him off the stage and into the crowd. That man has the moves! In his stocking feet (mismatched socks, quite endearing), he slides and thrusts and parries with his guitar all over the place, when he isn’t hunched over his collection of knobs and twiddles on the floor (surely a touch screen thing has been invented by now to control these things at waist height?).

‘Lucia, At The Precipice’:

They finish with ‘Eumenides’, wherein Copeman drags the much-abused drum out into the crowd and proceeds to further punish it. At the end of the set, my teeth have been fairly rattled out of my head from the seismic vibrations, howls, pounding drums and feedback. Actually, I think that was the desired effect- to induce a trance-like state of disarray and shock. Full of a furious energy and power, you don’t want to mess with Esben and the Witch – the results could be painful.

Definitely worth the aural assault and battery. Wish I could have had a bit more Creep, though. They were really ace, and I didn’t know enough to appreciate them until after. Next time!

Creep‘s debut single ‘Days‘ with Romy Madley-Croft is out now on Young Turks.

Violet Cries, Esben and the Witch‘s debut album, is out now on Matador.

Many thanks to the ever-fabulous Barbara Graf Horka for great photos.