Olga Bell And Tom Vek 

Purcell Room, London SE1

3/5

TO CELEBRATE its 21st birthday this year the Meltdown festival on the South Bank has decided to reach out to the youth and bring in trip-hop DJ James Lavelle, one half of Unkle, as its youngest curator to date.

Meltdown’s curators — past ones include Yoko Ono and David Bowie — can handpick their favourite musicians to perform in one of London’s more grandiose venues. Lavelle’s programme, which this year includes Goldie and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, also features Olga Bell. 

The multi-instrumentalist, Russian-US composer (pictured) performs her collection of electro-pop/avant garde rock and begins well enough. Her spectacular and thrilling voice ranges from the breathlessly high-pitched to a deep roar but after a few numbers the songs become almost repetitive. 

Next on stage is her collaborator Tom Vek, a multi-instrumentalist grungy rock star, with his band.

Musically, and surprisingly, the pair work well together. Bell’s chaotic and loud electrosynths chime perfectly with Vek’s meticulous and heavy guitar riffs and powerful bass.

But there’s a problem — the pair just don’t seem to have any chemistry on stage, with Vek coming across as almost irritated by Bell at several points. How, one wonders, did they manage to compose an entire album together? 

And while the Purcell Room doesn’t disappoint acoustically it is quite an unusual and almost inappropriate place to host these two dub-step, electro artists. It’s definitely not the venue to swing your arms while spilling your beer to their songs — which is probably what most of the audience want to do.

Indianna Purcell