The man with the loudhailer about a hundred yards away from the House of Commons called out that Sky News' figures reported about one and a half million people on the streets of Central London: this massed cheer, started by those who could hear him and then carrying on like a mexican wave back and back down the riverbank road. About twenty yards and half an hour earlier, we'd caught a shout and thrown it back up into the air, with no idea of the reason behind it but letting it ripple back through the crowd. Other people were doing it, now, with voices and horns and twenty-pence whistles sold for a pound by the same people who work the Notting Hill Carnival crowds; loud enough to drown out whatever more he was saying that sparked another, smaller, cheer.

Embankment to Westminster took maybe two hours of shuffling and ducking between banners, among clumps of people with placards ("no blood for oil", "not in my name", "make tea not war", "fight the rich, not their wars", the Daily Mirror- and Liberal Democrat-provided "No War", "fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity", and that "Blush" picture which is an echo of the Conservative 'New Labour, New Danger' advertising campaign of the 1997 election) and sellers of the Morning Star and Socialist Worker. All this, in an incredible demographic of people: not just the girls with tie-dye hippy bags made by happy weavers in Tibet, not just the die-hard Old Socialists in formation behind local union banners, but sixtysomethings with typed protest statements safety-pinned to their backs and average smart-casual office workers with backpacks and packets of biscuits and married couples trying to find a route their baby-buggies could follow.

It was a good day to be out.

Saw Low on Friday night at the Union Chapel (actually a functioning chapel, too), with A and postrock boy - well, with postrock boy in the sense that he didn't actually turn up until Low were virtually onstage, but we forgive him because he's quite clearly a lost cause. And the hugest sweetheart in the world, even if he's mean for reigniting my secret love of intelligent dance, postrock and alt.country (the axis of pretentious) by going on about Fridge and Boards of Canada and Rachels and Calexico and goodness knows who else. Also, he said that Low were the best live alt.country (or, indeed, slowcore) band, and Jesus fuck but they are. They're almost better live than on record - scratch that, with songs like 'The Lamb' they're actually better live than on record - and especially in the Union Chapel, sat down and shutting your eyes, it does not pall nor does it sour.

Low are... well, they're slowcore - i.e., slow, and also quiet - and alt.country - i.e., they sound 'American' in a way that can't be qualified, have a number of songs inspired by in this case Mormon hymns and base their harmonies on perfect fourths and fifths - and they're more on the GYBE! side of IDM-PR-A.C spectrum than at the, say, Autechre. Less with the twitchy beats, more with the drone. I have a feeling that I should be stating, for the record, that Ride and the rest of the shoegazing movement were obviously the precursors of postrock and alt.country, although obviously not IDM. In fact, if you mix shoegazing, techno and the minimalists, you will end up with intelligent dance, postrock and alt.country.

Tangents aside, they're fucking incredible - three people, all of whom can sing and have wonderful enunciation, playing these beautiful songs that deserve listening to with your eyes shut because it's so crystalline fragile you want to focus completely on each moment as it slides smoothly and incrementally by. They have this purity of tone - it's one of my musical kinks, the sound of a harp harmonic and Jeff Buckley's voice on the right notes and Sigur Ros when they're good and a perfectly-crafted bell - that rings through, clear and shining. Everyone who's got music-sharing software should check out '(that's how you sing) amazing grace', which is the most beautiful thing, mournful and hymnic and, I don't know, nakedly emotional? They opened with it (closed the pre-encores set with 'The Lamb', which is utterly tectonic in that Mogwai way), and I was dangerously close to crying for absolutely no reason other than it's joyful in the most desperately unhappy way.

Low have the kind of fan rapport I've only seen before with Hefner. The crowd's semi-heckling, wanting some 'rock and roll!', and calling out for 'Two Step' (a song of theirs, not garridge) culminated in one of the guys - I don't know their names - having promised to punch a member of the audience. So he sets off from the stage, is virtually dragged over a pew into a mass of bodies, and is then soundly kissed by someone in the front row. For a full minute, with everybody else in the chapel collapsed in hysterics. Darlings.

And then we wandered around a very cold Islington for ages, trying to find an actual cafe; failed at that, so got driven back to my coffeepot and A's cake, with postrockboy only getting lost twice, which was an achievement. (Last time, we went on an hour-long detour which took us nigh unto the M25. My house is on his normal route home to the Midlands.) It was gone 6am by the time we managed to stop talking enough for him to leave - music, and films, and I don't know what, but it expanded to fill over five hours. He is the cutest guy in the whole wide world (also, A faaancies him, which is actually not all that great since she's once again Sworn Off Relationships *coughbollockscough*, and I may have slightly been monopolising him in my joy at new! indie! person! who likes Ride! and Plaid! and appreciates the Teutonic wonder that is Rammstein! and who I can pimp Gavin Bryars at!).

Relatedly, the Warp website: intelligent dance, for the most part. I love this label like almost no other. The 'warpradio' section is fantastic: I've been listening to Autechre's 'Radio' for the past half hour.