Atoms for Peace, Roundhouse, review In the first of three nights at London's Roundhouse, Thom Yorke's supergroup side project offered up the kind of exuberant delight you might not usually associate with the Radiohead frontman. Scruffy as ever in beard, ponytail and black vest, Yorke switched between guitar, keyboards and just spinning around the stage, while the deep polyrhythmic grooves of his fantastic band juddered and churned around him, swallowing everything up in a great, propulsive rush of sound and light. Holding the musical centre was Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers" bassist bent like a bald hunchback over his four-string instrument, nimble fingers conjuring elastic basslines that flowed like liquid through the whole set. REM and Beck drummer Joey Waronker combined with Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco to push and pull tempos, criss-crossing and interlocking with the keyboard and computer tracks of producer Nigel Godrich and the slow-motion piano chords and jerky guitar lines of Yorke. Atoms For Peace is, effectively, a kind of 21st century jam band, not drawing on the blues but on a panoply of club beats, techno, electro, rock, jazz and world music. Their immense, hypnotic music can call to mind the startling inventions of John Coltrane, the gleaming pulse of Philip Glass, the psychedelic jazz funk of Sun Ra and the acid twitch of Aphex Twin while sounding not quite like any of the above. The music is, you may have gathered, very hard music to describe. These are barely songs, they are configurations of melody, sound and rhythm given some kind of focus by Yorke's high, yearning voice. In recordings, I have found the lack of lyrical clarity to be frustrating but, like all groove music, it is really made to be experienced live. This set drew on their only album, Amok, and Yorke's earlier solo album, Eraser, its introverted electronica fattened up for the dance floor. Not that there was actually much room to dance in a packed Roundhouse, but the 3,000 fans jammed together on a hot London night were locked into a kind of movement nonetheless, jittering and bobbing on the spot. "We've decided we're going to do a work out video," Yorke joked as he led the band back out for the first of seven encore songs. He didn't say much else; he didn't need to, his enjoyment was transparent and communicated all that was needed. With Atoms For Peace, Yorke comes to the stage free from the kind of expectation that can make Radiohead gigs so frustrating for audiences divided between those wanting to hear the epic rock that made them a stadium band and those happy to indulge their later shift towards avant garde experimentalism. At an Atoms for Peace gig, there is no question of fans being disappointed if they don't play the hits, because Atoms don't have any hits. You can just surrender yourself to the sound of an amazing band of fantastically inventive musicians boldly exploring the hinterlands of modern music.