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There's no doubt Hot Chip are a strange bunch. On the one hand, their music is pure electronic bliss – shameless pop bolstered by science-fiction sirens and heavy clumps of neighbour-bothering bass.

Pick up one of their albums, and you'd swear it was the work of a band who'd sweated their youth away on flustered nineties' dancefloors.

Unlikely stars

Then you catch a glimpse of the band in an interview, and you can't believe your eyes.

Skinny and angular, quaintly comfortable in muesli-coloured cardigans, questionable facial hair and scuffed trainers – these boys are the very antithesis of the nightclub dress-code.

Hot Chip when they played the Waterfront

But, like Mary and Joseph hitting the tiles, Hot Chip could be turned away at every door in town, and it wouldn't matter a bit to them.

For, as they remind a bustling LCR venue, Hot Chip have the ability to get a party going in a phonebox.

"Digital carnival"

Tonight, their live performance is little short of a digital carnival, and their sold-out audience quickly races to the dancefloor.

With a hypnotic techno pulse, Hot Chip soon have the audience under their spell.

And, as spindly light-projections are beamed across the room, a forest of hands reaches up as if to touch to them. But the best is yet to come.

As corny as it might sound, tonight Hot Chip have invited variety to the party.

From the nerdish regularity of Bendable Poseable, to the techno spasms of Shake A Fist, every lick of their set sparkles.

Add to that an ensemble of tribal bongo drums (surely another nightclub no-no?) and quirky samples that are probably the result of wasted hours on the internet, and you know you're in for a treat.

They're insatiable and absolutely irresistible. Yes, they can be strange at times, but, believe me, pop music rarely comes much better than this.

Hot Chip played at the University Of East Anglia, Norwich, on Wednesday, 20 February, 2008.