London crawling

Camden Crawl must be the best value night out for music lovers London has to offer. Twenty pounds for access to 55 bands across 12 different venues plus the aftershow clubs. This year they even gave away a free double CD showcasing most of the acts. While the emphasis was distinctly indie, there was enough diversity here to keep everyone happy - from Sixties-style girl group the Pipettes to veteran post-punk vixens the Slits. There was even the chance to see Britpop mavericks Supergrass in the tiny confines of the Dublin Castle pub. It was all crammed into a couple of square miles of North London but unlike similar events such as the South by Southwest festival in Austin or Manchester's In the City, it's also all condensed into just one evening. The result is that you only catch a fraction of the bands you want to see. Fortunately, the quality of the acts on offer meant that whatever way you planned it, it was difficult not to have a superbly entertaining night out.

To kick off proceedings, it was off to Lock 17 to see the mightily impressive Fields (pictured above). A hint of things to come came in the opening song, when deeply textured melodies suddenly gave way to a crashing explosion of noise. Recalling the shoegazer bands of the early 1990s such as Ride but with the pastoral folk inflection that their name suggests, the vocals of singer Nick Peill and Icelandic keyboardist Thorunn Antonia were frequently drowned out by lush harmonies and multi-layered waves of sound. Watch this space.

Next up it was a short stagger down Chalk Farm Road to the Underworld for Sheffield's 65daysofstatic. Lead guitarist Joe Fro’s big, frizzy hair makes it look as if he's plugged into the mains and for the next 40 minutes or so it indeed seemed that way as his band played at full voltage, venting their frustrations as if hooked up to a cathartic power surge. Like Mogwai, this is epic, amplified music to lose yourself in. No vocals, but with soundscapes this electric who needs them?

Following on the same stage were Humanzi, a leather-clad, meat-and-potatoes rock band from Dublin, who inhabit a space somewhere between the Stones and Primal Scream. "This is the shit, so get used to it!" they barked on their opening number, but as hard as we tried we were really looking for something more inspired so it was off to the Electric Ballroom for the end of funky art-rockers Shit Disco.

!Forward Russia! are an enigma. Four young guns from West Yorkshire in matching T-shirts, drawing on a variety of influences from punk to funk, they assaulted the audience at Lock 17 with a velocity of angular tunes and pounding rhythms. Singer Tom Woodhead’s wailing vocals recalled the Associates’ Billy MacKenzie, while the jagged guitars and rapid-fire drumming have more compatibility with their counterparts Bloc Party. Like 65daysofstatic, this a band that perform as if their lives depend on it and by the end most of the crowd were quite swept away by the sheer exhilaration of it all. Expect to see them on a much larger stage sometime soon.

There was just time to catch the end of the hotly-tipped Les Incompetants at the Colour Bar before heading back to the Ballroom to see Carl Barat's Dirty Pretty Things. Hardly original fare, but their sing-a-long, cheeky-chappie punk seemed an appropriate way to end the evening in the company of a thousand or so very drunk punters. Down the road at Koko, the Futureheads' gig was apparently interrupted by a power cut. It shouldn't have caused too much concern. Tonight, Camden was buzzing from its very own source of vital energy.

ARCHITECTURE > The Newest Wonders in a Growing London

Britain's capital is bursting with new architecture, from Europe's tallest residential tower to the world's largest covered soccer stadium.

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life," wrote the 18th century British writer Samuel Johnson. "For there is in London all that life can afford." In terms of dynamic architecture, that saying is truer now than ever before.

One has only to stroll the capital's streets, from the dynamic financial area near St Paul's Cathedral, to St. Pancras station in the northeast, the Docklands area in the east and Battersea power station south of the river to see that the city is undergoing an extensive facelift.

"More is going on now than at any time since the Victorians," says Peter Murray, founder of New London Architecture, the city's first and only permanent exhibition space dedicated to the capital's architecture. He explains that the population of Europe's largest city is rising for the first time in decades, thanks to an influx of young people from the rest of Britain and Europe. According to a 2002 study for the capital's city hall, London will need to find housing and office space for 700,000 more people by 2016.

RE-POWERED. World-renowned architects have taken up the challenge with relish. Some, like Italian Renzo Piano have opted to create new, record-breaking edifices. His Shard Tower at London Bridge will be the tallest residential building in Europe on completion in 2010.

Others have tapped into London's rich architectural history to convert old industrial buildings from the 19th century into modern-day office and residential areas, like the Battersea power station project dreamed up by a team of five British architects.

Still more have looked to the nation's love of sport to push the boundaries of modern architecture. Football fans (that's soccer to Americans) are waiting with bated breath for the opening of the new Wembley Stadium, home of the English national team and the largest all-covered soccer stadium in the world. Winning the right to host the 2012 Olympic Games has also galvanized the city, with project work focused in the capital's down-at-heel Lea Valley, in the east.

With so much going on, New London Architecture's Murray has created a giant scale model of the city to track recently completed and upcoming projects.

ARCHITECTURE > Battersea Power Station

Where better to build a vast, dynamic, new business and residential area than on the site of Battersea power station, an iconic symbol of British energy and one of the largest brick buildings in the world? With its distinctive four tall white chimneys, the power station was designed in the 1920s by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott–the same man who created Britain's famous red telephone box. It was decommissioned in 1983.