Deliberate almost to the point of being obstinate, the Awkward Moments were a thoroughly modern rock & roll band.

Their belief that most songs are too long and too loud was reflected in their music and performances. Whether they were playing one of their own strictly-functional songs or lovingly reconstructing someone else's, the Awkward Moments always had a very clear idea about why they were doing it like that.

The songs - which might be about social anthropology or physics, or being at the opera or having an accident with a gun - were short and pointed. Live performances were similarly brief and to the point.

Duncan played a drum kit held together with string. Arabella's keyboard was so tiny that people thought it was some sort of joke. Gideon played a buzzing, battered, fragile electric bass. Daniele played a garage-sale guitar through an amplifier the size of a toaster. They knew exactly what they were doing, and why. And once in a while, everybody really did sit up and listen.

The band appeared on the Cardiff music scene in the summer of 1996. They played regularly at local venues, and recorded the EP Five More Songs in November 1997. Meanwhile their repertoire and their reputation grew as they wrote new songs and worked out how to play old ones.

Things were getting good, and that's how they ended.

At Cardiff's Clwb Ifor Bach, where they had often played, the band felt that the audiences had been insufficiently appreciative of their ultra-low-volume aesthetic. On the occasion of their last-ever performance there they turned the amps up high, counted to four, and set off. That is how they would like to be remembered.

... the so-called support act, The Awkward Moments, climbed onstage unsmilingly, not even looking at the audience. They only played one song: "Autobahn". In German. For twenty minutes. Then they swaggered off, not once having acknowledged the crowd. Conceited arrogant swine.

When the band fell apart in 1998, no-one had the heart to put it back together again.