How would you like your nostalgia served, sir (and it is usually ‘sir’): in mist-shrouded monochrome or crazed lysergic Technicolor? Last week I saw two bands in the same venue, a few days apart. Neither having released any new material for more than a decade, both duly crammed their sets with their greatest hits. And yet one felt like the future, and the other like the past.

Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe, aka turn-of-the-millennium electronic duo Basement Jaxx, should be credited for having great sport with that in-built characteristic of almost all electronic outfits. Namely, that two or three blokes pushing a bunch of keys and buttons cannot hope to ever forge the kind of compelling visual identity so crucial to rock groups.

In Edinburgh, this felt less like a double-edged sword and more like a free pass to reinvention. The blank canvas that is Basement Jaxx was scrawled upon in unrelentingly entertaining fashion, as the duo revelled in presenting their music in a universe of kitsch sci-fi surrealism. There was lots of skin-tight silver bodysuits, man-sized vegetation, pulsating neon superviruses, lasers, moonbeams and all........

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