South London has an uneasy place in Britain’s sleazy rock’n’roll history. It usually thrusts forward those who sup from the devil’s cup.

The Rolling Stones, punk’s Bromley contingent (alumni: Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious), David Bowie and, um, Billy Idol have all stepped, fully formed and usually snarling, from its 1930s streets. So when, as now, south London starts producing great bands again, wiser heads will cock an ear.

What they will be listening to is quite startling — a broad and eclectic mix of art-rock, punk-funk, ska, blues and thrashy soul, all bubbling up from a scene that has managed to grow over the past five years, hidden from the media spotlight. In 2004, south London means bands like the Koreans, who mix live harmonies as sweet as Lennon and McCartney’s with arch indie disco beats. Or it means their former housemates, the Capes. Or their chum, Mower.

Or the ska’n’B of the Ludes, who shared the Koreans’ rehearsal space along with some film-makers. These bands are suddenly bursting out of involuntary exile and preparing to storm the charts.

Of course, it’s all down to the art colleges. In the dark Britpop years, south London was ignored by record companies, who preferred to hang around Camden and Manchester. The Koreans, the Capes, Mower, Art Brut, Bloc Party and others moved into the area because various members were studying at Camberwell and Goldsmiths. When the Koreans decided to rent a Camberwell railway arch from Railtrack to use as cheap rehearsal space, they soon had hordes of hopeful musos turning up. If the bass is mixed low on some of these albums, it is probably a subliminal reference to the 8.15 from London Bridge.

“We ended up living in the arches in 1998,” says the Koreans’ Oliver Hicks. “We had kids from art college making little films, the Capes jamming next door, the sculptor Oliver Shaw working in the corner — it was like Warhol’s Factory, but with lots of Bul- garian red wine, Special Brew and ketamine.”

What these bands lacked was somewhere to perform. Hicks’s bandmate, Brent Newman, recalls a bold attempt to help the scene along three years ago. “I was living on Brixton Hill in 2001,” he says, “and I knew there were so many bands who all hated going up north to play in Camden, so I tried to set up a night in south London.

I went round to all these bars with a business plan, but nobody would go for it: they just wanted DJs and dance music.” He laughs. “Now, of course, they’re all doing bands, which is really annoying.”

It took the rock journalist Tim Perry to make a difference. He rented the upstairs room in an unfashionable Brixton pub, the Windmill, every Sunday night and started promoting gigs. Bands such as Franz Ferdinand passed through on their way to the top, but there was also room for local heroes. After scarcely a year, the pub had bands playing every night. Soon, a spin-off scene was developing in the Paradise Bar and the Amersham Arms. All it needed was the record companies to take note and there would be something new to save the music industry.

“Not a single scout came south of the river in the six years we were playing in south London,” Newman says, laughing. “We had a guy from Warner in America hear one of our songs on the website Drowned in Sound and try to buy it for one of his acts. He came over to the UK, but Warner in London warned him not to go south of the river. He spent all his time in north London and Manchester, which is why south London bands hate the Libertines for benefiting from that laziness.”

“The great thing about being from south London is that we weren’t signed four years ago, when everyone was looking for the next Oasis,” Hicks adds. “I dread to think what we would have put out. We’ve got the songs now, the repertoire. A lot of bands get grabbed too quickly and put out stuff too soon. We have had time to gestate.”

As they are art college-inspired, there’s situationist experimentation afoot. The Koreans were recently out in Korea when the band’s name led to them being featured by the nation’s version of Ant and Dec. The gigs evolved into 1960s- style happenings, with local Seoul bands and even a troupe of Korean drummers joining in jams that ran on into the night. With Goldsmiths students trying to set up the Independent Republic of Rocklands in New Cross, it’s only a matter of time before the south rises again.

The Koreans is out now on Storm; free downloads at www.thekoreans.com