I've been waiting to see Jaga Jazzist since I first heard the fidgety and infectious A Livingroom Hush back in 2002. It took them a while to get to Scotland but the wait was worth it.

The venue was an unusual one. Mono is a micro brewery cum vegan restaurant (and home of White Noise's favourite disc shop Monorail) with a growing reputation for offbeat performances. Its character comes from it's odd, L-shape which results in the stage being set up at the end of the shortest leg, opposite the bar and right next to the main door. The stage would probably have been adequate for a normal band but for the ten players of Jaga and their formidable artillery of instruments it was something of a crush.

In performance they were every bit as good as I'd hoped. Rousingly energetic, enthusiastic and brimming with ideas. They ran through the bulk of their latest album, What We Must, and highlights from the previous two. The arrangements were near perfect replicas of the recordings but with added vim! Makes you think, with all that manpower, they could be recording the albums live anyway.

The music is kind of like Tortoise on steroids: all widescreen, cinematic melodies, fiddly bits of electronica, jazz blowing, driving percussion and flailing guitars, pretty much all at once on every track. They were a riot.

Drummer, Martin Hornveth, drives the band. He's a real workhorse, one of the most furious, kinetic percussionists I've seen. He plays with huge, infectious enthusiasm, grimacing and mugging hilariously as he goes. He plays with military precision, careering through the fiddly time signatures like he's knocking out four on the floor for practice. His brother, Lars, co-writes most of the music and plays assorted saxes and bass clarinet, guitars and keyboards.

At the front of the stage Andreas Mjos (who looked remarkably like a rather stoned Ewan McGregor) played vibes, guitars, laptop and assorted devices. Way up the back was a four man (ok 3 men and 1 woman) horn section, featuring trombone (Lars Wabo), tuba (Line Hornveth), trumpeter, Mathias Eick (who also played a mean acoustic bass, keyboards and percussion!) and flautist Ketil Vestrum Einarsen. Finally Even Ormestad doubled up on bass and keyboards, Harald Froland provided lacerating guitar solos and Andreas Hessen played great, wigged out 70's style prog/fusion synths.

They run a whole gamut of sounds a sort melding of jazz fusion, post rock, electronica, drum and bass and prog rock. But they do it imaginatively and unselfconsciously. In spite of the complexity of the arrangements you never get the impression they're doing this to show off their chops. It's very much as a collaborative effort and one they all engage in with tremendous enthusiasm. It's big hearted music, unafraid to be melodic and yet managing to have bite and be exploratory too. Definitely jazz in origin, it relies on actual playing not free form noise making (though that's a feature too) and so I suppose it's a bit old fashioned in this climate.

The band were visibly impressed with the boisterous crowd's rabid response and, after a short sojurn outside (no backstage area here) encored with their 'hit single' Animal Chin. It's a seat-of-the-pants belt through twisty jazz changes accompanied by drumming so furious it's virtually drum'n'bass breakbeats. It was a blazing finish to a blistering gig and pretty much blew the tiles off the roof.