With their third album, Made in the Dark, entering the chart at No4 last month, Hot Chip have capitalised on the advances made when their previous album, The Warning, was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize in 2006. This was the South London electropop group's biggest headlining show in the capital to date, and it began with an unusual flourish as 13 members of Redbridge Brass took the stage and performed an overture of Hot Chip numbers, specially arranged for brass band.

The group duly arrived, and the sound abruptly switched from the warm, traditional tones of a Hovis advertisement to the bright, bleepy, buzz and bounce of the synth-pop era as they kicked off with Shake a Fist. An unlikely assortment of shapes and sizes, the five band members did not all play keyboards all the time - in that classic Kraftwerk configuration - but it often seemed as though they did. Certainly, there was no unsightly drum kit to spoil the clean lines and symmetrical layout of equipment on the stage.

The short, slight singer Alexis Taylor, wearing his trademark boffin spectacles, played guitar, keyboards or percussion, while the bearded, bear-like Joe Goddard bounced around behind his keyboard with an infectious enthusiasm. These two have steered the group since they were schoolfriends and they remained very much at the heart of the performance. Taylor sang the unusually plaintive melody of And I Was a Boy from School like a choirboy, while Goddard's gruffer vocal counterpoint on Bendable Posable contributed to the impetus of a song that was more of a traditional dancefloor chant.

While the variety and intelligence of the group's songs set them apart from the typical one-beat-fits-all dancefloor show, they also tended to interfere at times with the momentum of the gig. Winding up with a long, slow ballad - In the Privacy of Our Love - may not have been the smartest move, before they eventually finished at 1am with an appropriately titled encore of No Fit State. “We've got the place till 3am,” they announced, as they trooped off stage, and for those with sufficient stamina and faith in the Brixton night bus, there was doubtless plenty more partying action to be had.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010