Gig review: Tom Vek

TOM VEKCLASSIC GRAND, GLASGOW ***

WHATEVER happened to Tom Vek? It's a question countless music website forum threads have pondered since the London punk-funk multi-instrumentalist and producer went to ground following his 2005 debut album We Have Sound's failure to live up to over-hyped expectation.

Six years later, and he's finally offering up an answer with the release of second LP Leisure Seizure, the creation of which was dogged by indecision about which studio to record in and a spell of writer's block.

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A wiry chap with slicked-back dark hair and thick-rimmed specs, Vek strolled casually on stage with his three-piece band looking quite content to pick up where he left off, and pretty much did, by opening with first album favourite C-C (You Set the Fire in Me).

Vek's new stuff makes minimal variation to his floor-filling mix of bubbling electronics, popping bass and drawling monotone vocals. Nobody writes them quite like him, though a clutch of contemporary artists have taken a similar sound and run with it while he's been away – the ravey Aroused, for example, wouldn't have sounded out of place in Friendly Fires' set.

It was older material – the Talking Heads-pilfering Nothing But Green Lights and the scratchy disco-punk of I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes – that really got the near sell-out crowd dancing. It seemed churlish of Vek to depart with barely a word said and no encore, but we probably shouldn't have expected anything less from an artist who could write the book on leaving people wanting more.

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