Thrill Jockey is 15 years old, and the celebrated independent record label is having a party. With cheesecake and everything, flown in especially as a gift from Eli's Cheesecake, a legendary cafe and bakery in the label's Chicago hometown. The venue: Camden Town's ornate and lovely Koko, which is a little bit older than Thrill Jockey at 207. But who's counting? Well, us, obviously. But anyway.

Headlining the evening are Thrill Jockey's relatively new signings The Fiery Furnaces, but this is an all-day event - an indoor festival if you will - so there's plenty to see before that and it is a diverse line-up, and probably the only context in which you'll witness the hammed-up wall of heavy-metal-machine-prog noise that is Trans Am preceding the schizoid sibling pop of the Friedbergers. Twisted Ear is lucky enough to be at the event, and this, folks, is what we saw...

It's only 5pm but when Arbouretum take to the stage it may as well be midnight. Their brooding set is enthralling and exhilarating; they create a huge, thick sound cocoon that you could step inside and live in for several days. An accomplished band, they're not timid when it comes to plying some deft tenderness to their already amplifier code-red primitivity. They trade in traditionalism, whether it's folk-rock, alt.rock or Lucifer bargaining blues, but in the stirring one-man guitar cacophony of Dave Heumann there's enough rancour to put any thoughts of cosiness straight to bed. Traces of a psyche-mentality occasionally scream out - Signposts And Instruments casts similar aquatic dreams as Hendrix's 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be) - but it's not until their art-rock meltdown finale that it becomes so devastatingly obvious. Rad trad, and a hard act to follow.

Throughout the course of their forty-five minute set Califone frontman Tim Rutili experiences a series of blows; the microphone gets served for an ace by the guitar headstock, the keyboard takes a tumble and a guitar string is tested to destruction. But being adventurous types, Califone push on with their percussion simmering blues and folk undaunted; the matter in hand is canny misadventure rather than mishap. Their purpose is served by a cast as uncompromising as it is large: Kit drummer Joe Adamik is wrapped in tandem with Ben Masserella and his exhaustive collection of chimes, steel pan, bells, wooden blocks, cowbell, floor tom and anything mobile within striking distance for much of tonight. And it's worth noting the detail because much of Califone's set is hung dead centre on the pair's obdurately fetter-free rhythms, giving the simple acoustic melodies and their errant electronic arrangements its driving excuse.

The consequence is a performance far more unyielding and unmoored than recognized on last year's Roots & Crowns. A Chinese Actor is much more propulsive, taking its rallying cry to a dizzying new limit; The Orchids excuses its humble tenderness for something prouder and more impassioned; Sunday Noises, too, encompasses a stauncher harmony as it teeters between reminiscence and affection. There's a real determination in evidence to the Califone approach, which may, in part, explain Rutili's broken string: here's a band conscious that what they create in the studio is reliant upon both equipment, imagination and sheer hard work, and whilst the former is here in all manner of guises it's the devotion to the latter that makes their performance compellingly atmospheric and so magically hard to decipher.

As The Sea And Cake are revealed from behind the video screen the sense of excitement and expectation in the building is so palpable that you'd think that there was a big cash giveaway in store, rather than a show. If there was any money to thrown about, however, then perhaps it would be best splashed on a replacement drummer. This is no personal sleight upon John McEntire - whose work with Tortoise is as exceptional as his recorded output with The Sea and Cake is deft - it's just that tonight, maybe out of over-excitement, all the band's light, loose and understated lifeblood is beaten bone dry. What made the band's latest Everybody such a lucid delight - the air of calm; the jazzy restraint - struggles for attention beneath McEntire's blanket of over-complicated, over-inflated sterile thunk. Let's not be too harsh though, because there's much about the performance to admire: Eric Claridge's perma-wrung bass gives the necessary low end fluidity and Sam Prekop's tissue-soft voice has an innate ability to sooth away even the roughest of percussive edges. But despite the rhythmic square wheel it's Archie Prewitt's incandescent guitar work that provides the most assurance: blinking its way through the audacious afro-melodies of Exact to Me and the Fripp-esque gossamer vapour trailing of Crossing Line, it's a constant marvel. Small wonders drowned by an almighty void; big shame.

Confession time: I was a teenage rocker. I had a leather jacket, Tippex on my army surplus steel toecapped boots and a canvas bag adorned with patches, studs and spurious bits of graffiti. I saw some searingly loud bands in horribly sweaty venues during my angsty youth and upon witnessing Al Jourgensen's Ministry at the Brixton Academy I genuinely thought I would never see a band so loud, and so ferocious, ever again. But Trans Am - well! - they are a different proposition altogether. Their music is so brutal and relentless that it actually hurts: there's a girl in front of me with her fingers in her ears, and although they are not scary like Weird Al, although they have an air of tongue-in-cheek about them, they are nevertheless fearsome to behold. You can't stop staring and listening even though you suspect it's probably not good for your health - you know you should move away or go and sit in a quiet corner but somehow you can't; it's like standing next underneath a jumbo jet that's about to take off, knowing you're probably in danger and yet and not being able to move.

It's bold enough to open with the German-tongued Polizei (Zu Spat) (essentially a hardcore version of Kraftwerk's Numbers, only with Florian and Ralf trapped in an iron maiden and added vocoders); even bolder to pummel the audience into submission with a set full of almost-pastiche of 70s and 80s prog-rock and metal. But the crowd goes wild for it and you get the feeling that it's a performance the Fiery Furnaces probably aren't going to be able to top.

Do you like rock? Of course you do: it's fuckin' great. And so do The Fiery Furnaces, their latest album is soaked to its hairy balls in it. But rock, alongside 'a hard place', is also pertinent to the location that band find themselves between tonight given the lukewarm reception they receive as headliners. Y'see it can't be easy for the siblings Friedberger - it's a Thrill Jockey celebration after all, and with Widow City being their sole release on said label, there's an honourable obligation of loyalty to play the bulk of it. The diehards may pine for a bit more Rough Trade-era Gallowbird's Bark or Bitter Tea but they're pretty much wholly starved of it. The muted response could be put down to a myriad of reasons: new release not quite fresh in the mind; the music less powerful than the brutal persuasion to smell the glove by the preceding Trans Am; stranded-at-the-station-phobic departees fretting about the last train or maybe everyone's rendered numb by the smorgasbord of tits and ass projected onto the video screen between bands (thanks a bunch, Bobby Conn). 

Surprisingly, given the nature of the new stuff, there's no lead guitar work tonight. Instead Matthew Friedberger is hunched up on an antique chair replicating those electric solos like a timid cat pawing away at his keyboards. And in true Led Zeppelin style, one of the influences on Widow City, the gravel-spewing bass apes all the synth-produced intended guitar runs and flourishes. Musically, as is the wont of the precocious Furnaces, the music just can't sit still; it makes for being the irritated backseat passenger in a car where the restless driver endlessly fiddles with the radio dial, fitful and fantastic in equal measure. Eleanor too, just like the music, is full of marked contrasts - from empowered procalmations to the nervous bag of ticks and innocence you'd associate with Chan Marshall, often with the spoken word underlining her narrative obsession, which is rarely sung. But shining moments do frequently surface for air, proving that these kids have the chops, if not the patience: from an exhilarating skim-read of The Philadelphia Grand Jury to My Egyptian Grammar's sloppy funk it has all the verbose slipshoddery of Patti Smith covering Crazy Horses. It's just the erratic attack you'd expect from the Furnaces - occasionally it's feel-good, but occasionally you'll feel nothing.

It's a rather odd end to a fascinating night that showcases everything to admire from a bold, imaginatively uncompromising label.  In a city where those using the Tube to get home will see the name Chicago at pretty much every station thanks to that musical, perhaps tonight, rather than the gaudy interpretation by the latest Z-list Roxie Hart, they'll remember the true sound of the Windy City.

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