Maybe it’s the moment saxophonist Will Heard suddenly leaps from his riser to sing lead on I Will for Love. Or when drummer Beanie Bhebhe lays down a smooth bassline on Go Far while keys player Kesi Dryden moonlights behind the drum kit. But there’s something about Rudimental live that feels like a school’s drum’n’bass-themed talent revue. As a football team’s worth of singers and multi-instrumentalists flood the stage with eager-to-impress youthful exuberance, you’d be only half surprised if politely hectoring hypeman DJ Locksmith or vocalist Anne-Marie Nicolson – a former three times world karate champion, as her high kicks attest – started doing a jungle version of Bridge Over Troubled Water on the spoons.
It helps mask the fact that, with their second album We the Generation topping the UK chart, this Hackney massive continue to reap huge returns from variations on a formula. Rudimental’s first No 1 single Feel the Love, featuring John Newman, set the template in 2012: guest vocalist sings pensive verse building towards a triumphant drum’n’bass-powered chorus and monumental drop. Practically every one of their hits to date through to Bloodstream (featuring Ed Sheeran) and Never Let You Go (featuring Foy Vance) repeats the trick. But Rudimental do it all with such winning vitality that it’s hard not to be swept along.
A rotating quartet of singers – Heard and Nicolson plus Thomas Jules and Bridgette Amofah – lead the charge, no doubt with an aim to follow Newman and Ella Eyre in graduating from the Rudimental school of guest vocalising to solo stardom. Amir Amor’s grandstanding guitar solos and a free-roaming horns trio likewise contribute to a laudably kinetic live spectacle where a lifeless DJ set might have sufficed. A booming Waiting All Night presents the inevitable finale. But not before one young fan demonstrates Rudimental’s personal resonance by proposing to her girlfriend on stage, then a celebratory old-school mash-up of Damian Marley’s Welcome to Jamrock and Shy FX’s Original Nuttah crescendos with team Rudimental attacking the audience with confetti cannons.
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At Alexandra Palace, London, 16 October. Box office: 020-8365 2121. Then SSE Arena Wembley, London, 29 October (0844 815 0815).
