Crouching, screaming and kicking, Alice Glass jumped from the stage and launched herself into the crowd just moments after Crystal Castles began their set at the Electric Ballroom. While the dark-haired, 20-year-old singer was thrashing around in a manner suggesting that she may be the secret love child of Karen O and Iggy Pop, her musical partner, Ethan Kath, 29, stood hunched in a hooded top over a keyboard console from which he coaxed a barrage of harsh, electronic sounds redolent of an Eighties games arcade.

Behind him an anonymous drummer recreated parts originally written and recorded on a machine. This involved hammering out a one-beat-fits-all, kick-drum rhythm with minimal variations on hi-hat and snare to create a piston-like, nu-wave marching beat stretching to infinity and beyond.

Welcome to the world of Crystal Castles, the duo from Toronto, whose self-titled debut album squeaked into the Top 50 this year and whose live performances at British festivals and elsewhere have contributed to an impressive word-of-mouth reputation for their edgy attitude and anarchic energy. When they played Glastonbury in the summer, Glass's stage-diving antics caused their set to be cut short by the organisers.

They got to the end of their set at the Electric Ballroom, although it didn't take long. The visual design - if you could call it that - was every bit as stark and uncompromising as the brash sonic assault, with lighting supplied from start to finish almost exclusively in monochrome strobes. Sometimes the flashing was fast, sometimes less so, but the unsettling effect of everything being viewed through a flickering half-light was relentless.

With extremes of sound and light being deployed in such bold, confrontational wedges, the visceral impact of the show was undeniable. But musically it was a pretty lame effort. Numbers such as Alice Practice and their latest single, Crimewave, released today, proceeded like screeching, clanging trains lumbering down a perfectly straight track.

Glass, who started her musical career in a band called Fetus Fatale, was engaged in an activity that had more to do with performance art than singing. You couldn't be sure that her microphone was even switched on as she rolled on the floor behind the monitor speakers or bobbed up and down among the heads at the front of the crowd. Every so often she imposed her presence on the pulsating electronic soundtrack with another round of squeaks and shrieks.

It was a dramatic ear-bashing, but random beyond words.

Crystal Castles play Academy, Dublin, Oct 1

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