Club NME 'New Rave Revolution' Tour, Waterfront, Norwich

The beat glo's on

Whether or not "New Rave" was initially invented by the music press in a fit of wishful thinking, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To quote Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. New Rave is real, and the kids love it.

And they really are kids at this gig, by the way. Looking around me, I feel out of place not just for my age but for holding a pint of cider when 90 per cent of the crowd couldn't even get served. (Of course, there might be other reasons, connected to the consumption of more traditional rave stimulants, for the popularity of Brecon Carreg, but this is Norwich, and these are nice children.) When the skinny pre-teens in the Gents laugh "did you see the fat guy in the moshpit?", I pause to assure myself that they didn't mean me.

For the New Rave bands, their first impressions of pop music forged at the cusp of the 1990s, there's an element of nostalgia here as they emulate the big, brutal riffs of those half-remembered rave hits on their guitars (all three bands tonight employ guitars and synths). But for the even more youthful crowd, who were barely out of nappies first time around, there's no nostalgia at all. Nor for me. I went to just one rave. I hated it. This, however, is brilliant.

Before they've even played a note, the opening act throw glowsticks and fluorescent necklaces into the crowd. It's unnecessary: already, this is one crowd which could cycle home safely. Many of them have Jackson Pollocked their own white trousers with day-glo paint and Klaxons slogans.

Glasgow-based Geordies Shitdisco, perhaps best known for a Youtube clip of one member belting a sound engineer onstage, show that there are still remnants of the recent punk-funk revival in New Rave. If you took The Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers" and Human Resource's "Dominator", simultaneously played them at 78rpm, set off a nuclear attack warning and shouted through a bullhorn, you'd be getting close to the Shitdisco sound.

Datarock are five Norwegians in red tracksuits, which make them look like Ben Stiller in The Royal Tenenbaums. Their music is less gonzo and more cerebral than their English tourmates - I'm reminded of Hot Chip - but their overhead handclaps and synchronised pogoing ensures high entertainment levels, and the call-and-response chorus of "Fa Fa Fa" is about as basic as it gets.

Between bands, the DJ from Simian Mobile Disco is kept way too quiet. The only time he's permitted to pump up the volume is for, of all things, "The Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing. Energy starts to sag, but the headliners bring it back up with an adrenalin jolt.

The Klaxons are Jamie Reynolds, James Righton, Steffan Halperin and Data Re-entry (look, he says that's his name and who are we to argue?), four slightly nerdy young men from New Cross. As they begin bellowing, it becomes clear that they are playing a berserk cover of Kicks Like A Mule's "The Bouncer", a novelty rave hit from 1992: "Your name's not down! You're not coming in!" (Later, they'll do similar damage to Grace's sublime "Not Over Yet".)

Of all the New Rave acts, The Klaxons are the one who could really be something, with or without a spurious movement to drag them along. Ironically, they're the most stereotypically New Rave of all, but they'd survive as a stand-alone curio. On occasion they're slightly Hard-Fi, and there's even a New Order steal on their new single "Magick", but in the main, with their car-alarm riffs and big Belgian neeeooowww noises, they make flesh the promise of Nitro Deluxe's classic, "This Brutal House". They rhyme "Julius Caesar" with "Mother Theresa", and in a surprisingly imploring falsetto, deliver the most fundamental and eternal of dancefloor imperatives, from Stacy Lattisaw to the end of time: "come on and dance with me...". They provoke a firefly riot of luridly radiant accessories - yellow, lime green, blue, orange, pink and violet - swirled above heads. After such scenes, and such an atmosphere, straightforward indie rock gigs are going to feel duller than ever.

The impulse driving all of these bands, with their hyperactive faster-louder aesthetic, seems to be the gleeful realisation that "noise annoys". Rave mk.1, it was frequently claimed (most eloquently in Simon Reynolds's "Energy Flash"), was "the new punk", but in those days, access to the requisite equipment made it relatively elitist. 15 years on, that "new punk" rhetoric is a reality: people who don't know what they're doing, doing it.

It may take a genius producer to coax a great record out of any of these bands (although The Klaxons' "Gravity's Rainbow" comes close), but for now, just enjoy the glee of these monkeys bashing at their typewriters, and don't worry about the Shakespeare.

Will it last for ever? No, but so what? Few good things, like the light from a glowstick, ever do. For now, buy shares in phenyl oxalate ester.

s.price@independent.co.uk