You’re elsewhere when they begin, present but your attention’s diverted: “Yeah, it’s Neon Blonde. Two guys from the Blood Brothers. You like the Blood Brothers? Yeah, you should check this out.” Man With Beard adds another record to his Most Wanted List, forever stored up top but never revealing itself when said person steps into a record store; it’s the way of those that want without needing. You eject the CD, slide it back into its position alongside whatever else you’ve brought to play this evening – Numbers and Oxes stare at you, blankly, cold and emotionless discs of plastic and pits - and switch your attention, fleetingly you assume, to the make-up-the-numbers band on stage. Nobody’s here for Eiger, least of all you; you’re here because you always are, it’s what you do; plus, Joeyfat are making a welcome headline appearance. Always an interactive experience, that.

Suddenly you’re acutely aware of the interaction before you, between man of pointed finger and track-stopping stare and audience creeping ever closer to the strange foursome before them. He shouts words that never reach your ear properly, his face turned away from where the night’s DJs will later play Girls Aloud tracks between Frank’s Christmas standard and some awful (requested) Rage Against The Machine. So you move, slightly, to your left and crane your neck; it hurts so you shift your feet with more purpose. Now you’re below the left-of-stage speaker, while the on-stage speaker rambles, still incoherent to all but those with lip-reading talents. It hardly matters: now he’s roaring, and the jazz-hued indie of three seconds ago has been ripped apart by a riff that could part oceans and destroy mountains like the sea does sandcastles. His head remains facing the other way – the way you’re looking, really – so you only see a bald spot, reflecting no light as all such sources are at ground level, causing shadows to dance menacingly across the ceiling. Here’s where your mind starts spinning in earnest, pulling names from hats like rabbits and digging pigeonholes into the impenetrable. Faith No More, Enablers, Isis, Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies. None stick, but all are present. You turn to the gentlemen who earlier stood by as you waxed lyrical about the last record played, the one by some band you've now forgotten: “Christ, these guys are good.” It sounds ridiculous in your head – you know better than to spurt forth such praise all of two songs (or is it three songs? Four? You’re never certain where the end meets the beginning again) – but makes sense when what’s before you can’t be simply summarised. When it detaches from normality and wanders, lonely, through fields of fuck-off bombast and flowering meadows of meandering streams of sparkling waters, an unstoppable flow of creative freedom. A geyser! Another eruption of something, something like something you know and yet something alien and uncomfortable and exciting. Something that makes you believe, again, in the power of music over mind, in its ability to touch the very core of oneself. That’s the feeling, the invisible knife that runs the length of your spine, teasing but never taking the plunge, the tingle at the end of your index fingers; just don’t attempt to put one digit on this.

You know, two or three months by now, this will be a fully formed obsession.

Another roar, and a sigh, and a spluttering thank you, thank you. You want to say something, congratulate the architects responsible for this shockingly newfangled creation, the impression of which lingers on your eyeballs and inside your deepest ear canals ‘til gone 2am. But all you do is head to the bar, buy a drink, shake your senses back into shape. Your heart is beating overtime, double-time, ecstatically; the beer cools the burn within and the belch frees the breath you couldn’t release for the band's, that band’s, entire set. Later, as you eat cold chips on the venue's step, they pack away their gear; again, you stand in awe. Simple, wonderful, awe.

You’re me, obviously; but you’ll fall in love Eiger just the same. These guys are good.