The venue: dark and low-key. The audience: punching above their weight in decibels. The lighting: dramatic, striking! In enters Kosheen, accompanied by guitarist and drummer, and the scene is complete.

Opening with Swamp, Sian Evans, Darren Decoder and Markee Substance, make their presence known to the Liverpool audience. Heavy guitar rifts and drumming sequences, augmented by authoritative lighting, captured the darker element of so many of the band's tunes.

Kosheen

Catch, a track from the band's first album Resist (2001), succeeded the instrumental. The powerful yet timorous vocals of Sian penetrated the venue. Dressed in black with a short choppy hairstyle, she looked the part, and governed the stage with her polished, expressive movements.

The band exhibited their unmistakeable Bristol music scene flavour - a distinctiveness that gave Roni Size and Reprazent, Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky, their edge - yet also exercise the versatility that avoids dogmatic loyalty to a particular brand, flitting unashamedly between drum & bass tracks from Resist and rockier, edgier numbers from Kokopelli (2003).

The audience were in anticipation as Avalanche's opening bars stealthily penetrated the venue. Arguably the best individual track on the new album, the trenchant bass and tormenting vocals narrate a story.. Along with Evans' sleek moves and pertinent lighting, the mood became much more subdued.

Followed by dance track Hungry, taken from the first album, Sian played acoustic guitar. Eagerly awaited by the resolute glow-stick contingent at the front of the audience, the band executed their lighter material as convincingly as their newer, heavier songs. Kosheen's aptitude for perfecting a fusion of music genres - drum & bass, rock, dance - explains why the band has such an assorted following.

Performing their next release, Wasting My Time, a bitter, detached number, which allowed Evans to flaunt her quivery, robust vocals, the band commanded yet another change of mood and tempo.

The release of their second album merited a transition from the customary Dance stage at the V Festival to the Alternative stage, where they were second on the bill this year. A progression the drum & bass trio view as a step in the right direction.

Abruptly bursting into Suicide, followed by Pride, the glow-sticks were uncontrollable. Funk-ridden, drum & bass tracks with dance undertones, satisfied a previously biddable audience. The transformation in mood confirmed that a number of fans had come to experience the pre-Kokopelli Kosheen.

Varying from drum & bass to their more emotive, textured material, Kosheen provided a roller coaster of a performance at the Academy. The first gig of their UK tour undoubtedly a success, thus verifying that Kokopelli equals, if not supersedes, Resist, with guitar-centric dance track All In My Head, performed as the encore, and Avalanche, being received with the same approval as drum & bass anthem Hide You.

Kosheen are undisputedly on their way to becoming the convincing and polished act that they are destined to be.

The trio complete their UK tour with a gig at London's Shepherds Bush Theatre before playing to audiences across Switzerland and Germany.

WORDS: ANDREA RANNARD