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You may not have heard of them. You may not have heard of what they do, either. In fact, you may have trouble even envisaging it. Graham Daniels and his musical partner, a man simply called Tolly, make up Addictive TV. They are thoughtful, modest, getting on for 40 and responsible for mind-bending live entertainment. They call themselves audiovisual (AV) artists: they create live pieces of simultaneous music and video that often incorporate samples, so you will see a film snippet on the screen behind them and hear the corresponding sound at the same time. Split-screen effects reflect the numerous AV elements being deployed at once.

For the past four years, Addictive TV have put on a free outdoor concert on the South Bank, projecting onto the side of the National Theatre. This year, the highlight was a cut-up of Laurel and Hardy, which you can watch on YouTube. If you think that sounds gimmicky, think again. The musical part of their work could happily stand on its own - Addictive TV are festival favourites around the world. Next month they are guests of honour at the Amster-dam Dance Event, Europe’s biggest electronic-music get-together.

It can be lonely at the top, though. “There are so few people doing this,” Daniels says. “Often, at a festival, we’re the only AV act. And at film festivals, we feel like the odd one out. We’ll be surrounded by film directors, and when we explain what we do, they say, ‘What are you doing here?’”

The problem is that Addictive fall between two stools of the entertainment industry. They are not quite music, not quite film, and nobody knows what to do with them. Daniels thinks the music biz is “shortsighted” about AV, and you’d have to agree. “The labels, especially the majors, are missing a trick by not signing AV artists who can create music and what is in effect the promo video at the same time. We could also remix back catalogues and archives.”

Imagine EMI striding confidently into the 21st century by commissioning Addictive TV to create an AV Beatles album, like a souped-up version of what Dangermouse did by remixing the Fab Four’s White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album. “Everything is heading in the direction of video - the whole YouTube and iPhone explosion shows that,” Daniels says. In the industry's defence, VJs (video jockeys) may have been around for decades, but their sets can be turgid affairs oriented towards chillout rooms. There is little risk of being chilled out by Addictive TV in full flight, bashing out energetic break-beats from their laptops and flinging AV clips from their DVJ decks.

Even the cognoscenti can find their work overpowering. “We once did a screening in London,” Daniels recounts, “and there was this guy in the audience who was already in an excitable state. He started shouting, ‘I can't cope with this; this is in my head’, and ran out of the room. I went after him to check he was okay.”

They have also picked up fans in high places. When they supported Moby this summer at SXSW, in Texas, he told them they were a hard act to follow. “It was great because I’d been a big fan for years,” Tolly says, still in awe. In San Francisco, they played with Grandmaster Flash, the hip-hop pioneer. “For the last 15-20 minutes of the set he stood there staring at the screen,” Daniels recalls, “When we finished he said, ‘Man, you guys are next-level shit.’ ” This year, however, will surely go down as “the year of sport” for Addictive TV, Daniels says with a chuckle. Not only were they commissioned by Adidas to make a short piece for an Olympic-themed Sport in Art exhibition in China, but they also remixed two days of Olympic coverage, live, for Austria’s state television channel. They are playing, too, at Wembley next Sunday for the opening of the Cultural Olympiad, the prelude to the 2012 Olympics fandango. As well as that, on Saturday they have a show at the opening of the Quad BFI film centre in Derby.

Their highest-profile Hollywood commission came this year: a short remix of Iron Man, which Paramount used as a viral trailer. In the past few days, the duo have been working on a remix of the film Max Payne, based on a hit computer game. “Another studio has asked us to do three films - it wants to do them one after the other,” Daniels reveals nervously. The revolution will not be televised; it will be AV.

www.addictive.tv ; uk.youtube.com/addictivetv

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