Allan Mutuku-Kortbæk’s Picks:

1. Reptile & Retard (Junior Pavilion, Roskilde, June 26)
Reptile & Retard’s concert at Roskilde’s junior Pavilion takes the crown for the best concert of the year purely on account of the manner in which the audience were flung into a roller-coasting two hours of sheer mayhem that culminated in the lead singer clambering onto the pylons supporting the stage before hurling himself into the crowd below. It’s seldom one sees a concert of such proportions and if it’s anything to go by, Reptile & Retard are definitely a name to watch out for in 2012.

2. Yann Tiersen (Rust, May 29)
French artiste Yann Tiersen was at his best at his performance at Rust back in May. The concert featured an intriguing blend of instrumentation that saw him showcase his penchant for multi-instrumentation, leaving the audience in a state of star-struck euphoria as they were treated to a blend of his older work combined with tasty snippets off his latest album, Skyline, which hit the shelves towards the end of the year.

3. When Saints Go Machine (Store Vega, November 5)
WSGM’s catchy fusion of the chaotic and the dreamy was executed with perfection and panache at their concert in Vega in November. Lead singer Jonas Kenton had the crowd in the palm of his hand as his falsetto vocals connived synonymously with layer upon layer of decadent drumbeats and roaring riffs.

4. Charles Bradley (Odeon, Roskilde, July 1)
The 62-year-old ‘Screaming Eagle of Soul’ gave one of the best Roskilde performances of the year, a soulful journey that saw him leave the stage in tears of elation and raw emotion. Bradley’s life story, a rags to riches fairytale that’ll touch most people’s hearts forever, shines through at his gigs, and at Roskilde, this was no exception.

5. The Strokes (Orange Scene, Roskilde, July 2)
In a festival in which the Orange Scene was something of a stranger to the spotlight, Julian Cassablancas and company were one of the few acts that played at the venue to truly set it alight. Their fourth studio album, Angles, is a pearl in itself and featured quite prominently in the course of the concert, a show that stitched the old and the new seamlessly together.