An exorbitant number of security guards bulk up the nigh on non-existent audience, however were he playing somewhere shitty down the other end of City Road you get the impression that there'd be a few more bodies eager to soak up his rambunctious beats and momentary wobble. For Ross Tones, at his best, is capable of smudging the boundaries between emotive Boards Of Canada ambience and Mogwai at their most gut-wrenching, their most downright disheartening as he works diligently, thumping samplers and tinkering with an Alesis Micron. He may intermittently amble off into rather mundane, colourless 'post-dubstep' territories, synthetic handclaps aplenty, yet with headphones clamped firmly onto his head Tones appears to be in a world of his own, unknowing or uncaring of the fact that there's a disrespectfully vast throng crowded around the bar next door. Dismayingly, as grotesque Hallowe'en decorations dangle limply from the ceiling, within this cold cavern it feels as though we've pitched up at a party three days late.
Thus far there's been only little amusement, with the band of that very name having cancelled following a sprangle of the automobile variety earlier on in the day. As a consequence, it's therefore time for tonight's headliners. Enter unclassifiable, incongruous quintet Duologue, and in fact enter what may finally be considered a turnout, decked out in denim slacks and tawny, squared-off shoes. Far from your standard spectator is the average Duologue 'fan', yet so standard, so ordinary are this band that they feel akin to one aimed at listeners nonplussed by music and the joys of discovering something, anything in any way pioneering. Guitarshop noodling is thankfully offset by the vague unconventionality of the four strings of an electric violin yet there's a selection of only one band you'll ever end up sounding like when whining and whinging in lop-sided yelp atop E-Bow sustain, and that particular band, a notoriously idiosyncratic, inspirational, and innovative Oxford bunch, shouldn't really be touched, nor interpreted, nor imitated. They open with Cut & Run and while looking a bit like Muse fans, they sound like a knock-off of the aforementioned headliners, before launching into the bottomed-out synthetic bass of Crave. It feels as though we're privy to a local battle of the bands, Duologue headlining purely because they've the most expensive gear and that which occupies the most square metres of stage. Said battle would have to be held somewhere inoffensive, such is the monotonous delivery of both song and between-song gratitude. Perhaps Reading; for Reading fits in well with all that Duologue stand for, primarily as at times they sound like every one of the festival's stages furiously gargling at you simultaneously. They also sound like the amalgamation of the bad bits of two decent, if lamentably now-deceased acts in The Cooper Temple Clause and Hope Of The States. However predominantly, they merely sound like Radiohead, and while their aural aesthetic may somewhat resemble a band worthy of headlining any festival anywhere on the planet, they merely, indistinctly, sound like midtable, midday obscurity.
