Thoroughbred stuff from Foals | livemusic.fm

Great venue. Check. Great line-up. Check. Free tickets. Check. As music festivals go, iTunes' month-long residency at Camden Roundhouse certainly takes some beating - as the impossible youthful queues which snake around the rotund live venue before the doors have even opened would attest. There was a definite end-of-term blowout feel in the air as fresh-faced teens swigged cans of lager and eagerly chatted away, fresh in the knowledge the words ‘text book’, ‘revision’ and ‘trigonometry’ would not be uttered for months as party season was upon them. And what better way to kick-start the revelry than with two cracking, whip tight acts who know exactly how to get the juices following?

First up were Northern Irish sensations Two Door Cinema Club, already making deserved waves thanks to their impressed debut offering, Tourist History. Hailing from County Down outposts Bangor and Donaghadee, the four-piece ripped into the majority of cuts from their debut offering at lightning speed. Cherubic frontman Alex Trimble may have ill advisedly donned a snug woollen jumper on another muggy London night, but it certainly didn’t hold him back. His crystal clear vocals were both angelic and powerful on the giddily optimistic Something Good Can Work and punchy I Can Talk, while Kev Baird’s throbbing basslines had more people throwing shapes than most support acts are entitled to expect.

With an Apollo-esque countdown to further increase the Foals fever, Yannis Philippakis and Co took to the stage under a cloak of darkness, all denims and fashionable fringes. With album two, Total Life Forever, now out there in the ether, the quintet oozed all the confidence rave reviews should instill. So much so the Oxford so-called math rockers (we’ve now had art and math, who’s for home economics rockers?) could nonchantly drop arguably their best-known track to date - the imperious Cassius - into the set early doors.

The Roundhouse’s exquisite sound (is there a better venue in the capital for acoustics?) thankfully gave the five-piece’s music the room it needs to breathe, with oldie - the Bloc Party-esque - Olympic Airways aptly soaring and pulsating forthcoming single, Miami, demanding to be danced to. The band’s swarthy frontman was clearly having a ball too – repeatedly crowd-surfing and even climbing a precarious looking speaker stack during the encore. It all got too much for one punter in circle as well; who compelled to join the masses at the front risked a 12ft drop to get on the arena floor - almost inadvertently landing on a bemused bystander into the bargain as alarmed security guards jolted into action to prevent any further high jinx.

On the reprieved (yay!) 6Music the frontman recently spoke of wanting to make ‘ballet with beats’, an ambitious target, yet with musical flourishes and pirouettes of the like which pepper their sophomore LP, they're well on their way to achieving such a poetic goal. Thoroughbred stuff indeed.