Live: Singed Reptile. Little Dragon, Boiler Room.

Almost exactly eight weeks to the day, Yukimi Nagano took her Little Dragon Swedish electronica squadron deeper underground just north of the Thames. Tonight however, they've ventured south of the river to up the ante, as well as the infernal climes within the Boiler Room, ahead of the release of their third full-length, Ritual Union, expected July 25th on Peacefrog Records. Nagano is the sort of electrifying frontwoman to inherently attract cliché, whilst simultaneously retaining every last ounce of her dignity: inevitably most women would relish being in her quirky, dainty shoes and judging by the gruff mumbles that rumble within this subterraneous corrugated iron hangar, an equatable number of males in attendance would savour being with her, and so on and so forth.

If tonight's show were cobbled together more or less at the last minute, the undulating synths of My Step, complete with obligatory, seemingly extemporised intro, and the tribalistic, Peaking Lights-ish dub throb of Summertearz bespeak the intricacies within their elaborate, inordinately energetic live show, keyboard wizard Håkan Wirenstrand shrouded in shadow stage-right, controlling and contrasting vocals and samples in Zeus-esque omnipotence. A distinct departure from the grubby sounds that tend to emanate from the Boiler Room to the outer reaches of the globe and beyond via USTREAM, the luminous Nintendo-like resonance of Little Man figuratively irradiates the begrimed tunnel, whilst NightLight sounds akin to Capital FM-endorsed '90s R'n'B infiltrating a concise history of Sónar. However foreseeably, the Gothenburg outfit are at their most engrossing when excavating wonky, disco-entrenched Machine Dreams from the back catalogue, and it's the genre-hopping, airy groove of Feather that provides the greatest few minutes of any Elephant & Castle evening. If their live shows continue to showcase forever more evidently quite how majestic Little Dragon have become, they're certain to imminently emerge from the underground to burst the bulging banks of the mainstream...