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quoted 4 lines Anyone go last night? just wondering coz i thought it

> Anyone go last night? just wondering coz i thought it > was fucking wicked!! Especially enjoyed the spastic > beats courtesy of r. devine but plaid was nice to > dance to aswell. top show, i thought anyway.

I was at the Glasgow School of Art one on last night. Arrived about half an hour after the doors opened and waltzed in to see the second bad vilbel video gracing the enormous projector screen. This, I said to myself, is going to be fucking incredible. After purchasing quality merchandise the video ended and we were treated to some quality DJ'ing, mostly old acid tracks and the odd bit of aphex or autechre thrown in. This was nothing to prepare us for Chris Clark. He played a rather wonderful set of danceable stutterbeat sounding very different from the Clarence Park album, more grown up with less throwaway bits and more danceable chunks. And Mr Clark was enjoying himself too, looking as though he was pretty much just pressing play, but was at least dancing to the music, and enjoying the crowd of limb flailing dancers at the front, who, due to the rather non-linear nature of the music looked perpetually confused and out of step (hey, I should know, I was raving like a madman too). The visuals were also interesting, lots of pseudo shockwave graphical sound demos, nice and far superior to your usual club graphics. All in all very enjoyable, good enough for me to say, "If I went home now, I'd still have had a good night". Then came the second interlude. We were first shown the Pork Production video for Itsu by Plaid (Dir. Pleix), a 80's style marketing fuelled video put through a meat grinder, graphically a little DRivative but nevertheless very pretty, followed by some more DJ antics, finally before Richard Devine came onstage we got Monkey Drummer. I won't try and explain the effect that Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount had on the crowd, it suffices to say that slamdancing is back in. By the end of this we noticed that there were two laptops set up and bathed in the glow was the next artist. Richard Devine. Words escape me to describe just how good this set was. I'll try the first few that come to mind. Frantic. Insane. Beautiful. Danceable. Never a dull moment as he pumped out insane glitch techno, with occasional recognisable bits chucked in, fused into a maelstrom of crunchy bass, perfect suited to my personal brand of handflapping, head lolling, arm waving, foot stamping dancing. The entire dancefloor was alive and jumping as he gave us an unstoppable line of pounding music, reminiscent of Tri-Repetae era Autechre played at 45, but with sharp edges and more static. The lighting was reduced to strobes and everyone was in their own little world of sensory overload/deprivation. Mov Macros 7 (from the tour CD) was played as was Kepter from Lipswitch, I recognised a few other tracks, but the majority was very fresh. Nice also was the ecstatic face of Richard Devine as he was playing, truly enjoying every moment of the music, jumping with the beat and having fun. The end came with a crowd killer of a track rising waves of static, fuzzy synth, breaking into furious frenzied breaks and bass for a few minutes followed by another noise wave, repeated until the masses could take no more and it all stopped. I have to admit that I was relieved, having danced for the duration of his set, my legs had died. As I slurped at a refreshing pint of water we were treated to the best video of the night, and possibly the most perfect video representation of Autchre possible. Ganz Graf is a good track, but the video is perfect, a generic CGI car part looking piece of metal, distorted and flowing with every beat, pulsing with the static, exploding with the bass. Really, perfect timing and creative visuals making it a pleasure to watch. I want the DVD now... The DJ's returned, playing a short blast of soothing music, finishing with a track from SAWII blended with sharp bursts of analogue crackle, then Plaid took the podium. Kicking off with some new stuff Plaid managed to rally the crowd once more and bring them back to their feet for one last barrage of fine Warp music. They played quite nice (but a little live versions off of their recent release, and threw in the odd track from their back catalogue, with rather lovely visuals on the big screen, the absolute apex of which, personally, was when they played my favourite Plaid track, Pino Pomo from Rest Proof Clockwork, along to '50s style futuristic pictures. Unfortunately Plaid had none of the energy of the former two artists, and were far less exciting to watch live, still the music was good, if a little too polished sounding, as though it was being played from the CD. Disappointing compared to the brilliance of the Richard Devine set, most of all as they are one of my favourite Warp artists. At this point my flatmate and I bailed and made the mad dash for the cloakroom so we could catch the last bus home, a trip that was quite the most unpleasant part of the night, deafened for an hour by obscenely loud Abba and Steps. Shudder... Altogether this was one of the best nights I have ever been to, as good as the Rephlex night at the same venue last year, the perfect blend of danceable and interesting music, the highlight being the brilliant Richard Devine and the only letdown being the somewhat lacklustre Plaid performance. cheerio georgewilliamson --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org