Wandering into Conway Hall last night, I found myself surrounded on all sides by menacing looking banks of speakers.  Given the line-up for this event, I was more than a little frightened, and was beginning to have images of me dragging myself out of the Hall by my fingertips with blood streaming out of my ears.   For the first time, I even wished I had brought those orange earplugs the Wire sent me some months back.  When the lights went out, and the room was silent but for the tssssssssssss of a pretty ineffectual smoke machine, my hands went clammy, like I was on a plane, on a runway, with the engines just about to kick in.

Haswell and Hecker’s Xenakis-inspired set (they use his graphic-input “UPIC Music Composing System”) began by testing out the bottom end of the speakers and, by virtue of the fact that I was sitting on the floor, the bottom end of me. They switched to some head-spinning high notes, before bringing it all together in pummelling waves of sound.  Green lasers picked out the glitterballs twirling from the roof, scattering light into every corner of the room that wasn’t already full of noise.  Strobes bleached walls which were already scorched by the abrasive textures emanating from all those speakers (I noticed Russell Haswell had his eyes closed during these moments, obviously like me he isn’t too keen on strobes – ooh they make my brain hurt).  I felt like I was strapped to the undercarriage of a train, rumbling over some very uneven tracks at massive speed, feeling every bump and twist.  It was quite exhilarating.

After H&H had finished with us Pan Sonic reintroduced us to the concept of rhythm, and my ears soaked it up like a dry sponge would do water.  Ilpo Väisänen was picked out in front of a live oscilloscope projection of the waveforms they were creating, with Mika Vainio skulking in shadows at the side.  They played some patterns recognisable from their recent (and much-loved here) album Katodivaihe, including “Virta 1”, but the tracks were stripped of all extraneous material, and the gaps between the beats were refilled with liquid metal and grit.  During “Lahetys” it was easy to imagine that we were in trenches, with a cinstant background buzz of gunfire, and grenades detonating all around.  It was so loud that it became as much a physical experience as an aural one, the shock waves pounding my stomach and chattering my teeth were as vital as those entering my ear canal.  Those waveform projections looked like a dense swarm of fireflies by the end, as if the rules of physics had been shattered and thrown mockingly into the sky, where they could float free of gravity.  As the last grain of sound slipped through, I could just about make out someone shouting “Not loud enough! Rubbish!”, which sent me home with a smile on my face.  When I finally got there, I threw out those earplugs.

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