Small is beautiful: The xx downsizes its live show

But this is hardly a reversal of fortune for the popular trio. The band has intentionally chosen to limit its audience to 45 fans at a time over a 10-day run of shows, conducted two to three times daily.

The era of stadium rock and big hair has rarely seemed more distant. In these intimate groups, every glance is exposed, every ticket is for the front row, and no one has to strain to get a good photo. Rather than simply entering the venue, fans made their way through a maze of corridors before encountering the band, as if stumbling on a tribal ritual in a hidden woodland clearing.

The performance ‘often seemed as much an art installation as a concert, and at every moment like a dynamic, self-aware commentary on the issue of scale’, wrote a reviewer in The New York Times. The concert was ‘an audience engagement intense and solemn enough to resemble a ceremonial rite’.

LS:N Global previously described a trend for more immediate, versatile, primal and serendipitous live music performances in our Futuretainment macrotrend.