Joyous and sexy: Nathy Peluso, at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, reviewed

Few forms of music have colonised the world like metal and hip-hop. Wherever you go you will find these two alchemising with local genres. A few years back, I took a trip to Kathmandu to visit a Nepali festival, where I saw bands from all over south Asia blasting through the beats, and in the streets outside the cabs threaded past with hip-hop blaring out of open windows. Both still represent youth in a way that lots of pop and rock no longer does. Hip-hop is simply the lingua franca of popular culture for anyone under 40; metal is still the most potent symbol of rebellion music has to offer – no matter that the rebellion is usually carefully packaged into a set of signifiers designed to tick adolescent boxes. But they are also omnipresent because both are malleable. They can be twisted into any shape, which means they do not sit still. Whereas a band playing Americana today will sound very much like an Americana band from 1980, the chances are that someone playing metal today will sound very little like a metal band from 1980.

Take A.A. Williams. She’s signed to Bella Union, the label founded by Simon Raymonde, once of beloved 1980s etherealists the Cocteau Twins, which specialises in woody sounding music of the kind often made by men with ragged beards and plaid shirts. But she also gets reviewed in Kerrang! and Metal Hammer. She makes heavy music that has indisputably come out of metal, but also exists somewhere between planes. There’s a good bit of post-rock in there, hints of the music that has become known as post-classical, and, in her pure, clean voice, bits of folk, even.