The last time I saw Diagonal, at the Rise Above tenth anniversary gig a couple of years back, they really blew me away. Here was a young band playing old school dark progressive rock, in the vein of Van Der Graaf Generator or King Crimson, in a completely authentic and thrilling way, but adding their own twist to it and their debut album echoed this.

Tonight, Diagonal are a surprisingly different band to that night, and whilst the music they are now playing is still firmly rooted in the 70's, it has morphed into a saxophone-led jazz rock direction, perhaps more in the vein of Soft Machine, or Hatfield & the North, but minus the whimsy. With the spacey keyboard sounds swirling in the background, another strong influence I detected was latter era Gong, almost a fusion of the 'You' and 'Shamal' ages of that band. Diagonal's songs are also now largely instrumental and contain such titles as 'Analysis Of A Proposal'. They may have raised a few eyebrows, and I certainly heard a couple of complaints from those around me, but to be fair what Diagonal did deliver tonight was just as compelling as the last time I saw them, just in a radically different way. They had a healthy contingent watching them, the venue was rapidly filling up as their set progressed, and they went down extremely well. Did they blow me away as much? Not quite, but Diagonal are still immensely enjoyable and worthy of further investigation.

By the time Wolf People hit the stage, the audience has swelled to impressive numbers, it's not quite a sell-out, but it can't have been too far off, for what is Wolf People's biggest London gig to date. Wolf People haven't as yet followed up 2010's magnificent 'Steeple' album, but they're about to disappear into a (probably) woody retreat to write and record the next album. They're also promoting 'Tidings', an album of their pre-'Steeple' recordings.

For me, it's the 'Steeple' material on offer tonight that really shines - a delicious fusion of psych rock and traditional British folk. In many ways, this band reminds me of an English version of Graveyard. They can certainly rock out, but whereas Graveyard point in the blues direction to complement the psyche, Wolf People rely on folk influences. At times they also remind me of the classic Sandy Denny era Fairport Convention, and although there's obviously no vocal similarity in the voices of Denny and Wolf People front man Jack Sharp, there is in the delivery of the songs, none more so than on the sublime rendition of the traditional folk tune 'Banks Of Sweet Dundee'. Elsewhere, the likes of 'Morning Born', 'Silbury Sands' and 'Castle Keep' illustrate that this is one very special, and unique, English band.

It's really all about the music for Wolf People, so it's fair to say Sharp isn't the most charismatic of frontmen, but when former flute player Joe joins them on stage for a storming encore of 'Tiny Circle', the energy levels seem to increase dramatically. If Wolf People can produce an album to equal or even better 'Steeple', they really will be moving from strength to strength in 2012.

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