A man wearing a giant styrofoam smiley face and a boilersuit throws shapes beneath a lurid green spotlight. A couple of numbers in, a masked wrestler emerges and trudges round the stage. Such cartoonish capers do not particularly faze or excite the young audience at this club gig; wacky surrealism has been de rigeur in dance music for so long that we have perhaps become visually desensitised. But at least everyone has retained their sense of rhythm, and the crowd moves cheerfully to a handful of numbers from Sgt Rock's debut album, Live the Dream (released on Wiiija last summer), a noisy, jocular swirl of big beat with squelchy acid-house effects.

Named after a DC comics army hero, Sgt Rock are the most recent project from Jim Burke, formerly of Collapsed Lung. With Burke the only musician actually on stage, tearing between his keyboards/sampler and bass guitar, Sgt Rock seem to encapsulate everything about live dance music that its detractors loathe. It's a messy performance, the vocals are perfunctory and even the scratch noises are sampled, which takes away some of the gig's edge.

But Sgt Rock counter such criticism with a wilful light-heartedness and gusto, and an ear for infectious, driving basslines. The instrumentals do tend to blur into one another, but they're essentially geared for dancefloor consumption.

What Sgt Rock can't overcome, however, is the fact that they are ultimately reminiscent of a dozen waggish acts that have gone before, from Altern-8 to Bentley Rhythm Ace and even Carter USM and the Happy Mondays. Acid house always was a pantomime; but "shall we take a trip" never referred to memory lane, and so Sgt Rock's nostalgia-drenched efforts divert rather than command our attention. Even the fresh-faced teenagers in the audience seem aware that rave already happened, and it was more happening than this.