Anyone looking for evidence of how rock has changed over the past 15 years could look to Matt Johnson, better known as The The. These days he is a marginal figure, but in the late 1980s Johnson was a bona fide star thanks to The The's 1986 album, Infected. Brooding and claustrophobic, every single released from it was banned by Radio One. Nevertheless, it sold 1m copies thanks to a massively expensive promotional film shot in Peru and Bolivia.

Johnson certainly sticks out at this year's Meltdown festival, bypassing his old hits in favour of "a newly commissioned piece to celebrate the Meltdown spirit". He and collaborator Jim Thirlwell sit at tables in front of bottles of water and laptop computers, as if hosting a press conference to launch a dotcom company. Electronic noise grinds from the speakers; grainy videos of east-London tower blocks are shown; black-and-white film loops flicker. Thanks to an unfortunately placed projector, the images are visible on Johnson's bald pate - a rare moment of comedy in an otherwise bleak evening.

Backed by pounding beats and discordant samples, the songs have a London theme. Most of them revisit the lyrical territory of Infected's Heartland, also performed tonight: the capital is a hideous, crumbling dystopia, and you don't have to be mad to live there but it helps. Johnson is in his 40s now, and his concerns about the capital seem to have aged with him. "Those folks who dig my pavement are incompetent and lazy," he tuts at one point, sounding more like a letter to the Evening Standard than he had perhaps intended.

The show is intriguing and challenging rather than fun, which seems to disgruntle some sections of the audience. A few people leave, and the merits of Johnson's approach are hotly debated in the foyer. For all the set's resemblance to a rather stern lecture, it is different and provocative. The spirit of Meltdown seems safe in Johnson's hands.