Sometimes I really wonder why I don’t just move to Dalston and be done with it. I’m spending so much of my time riding the 236 these days that my clothes are beginning to smell of bus. Or maybe the bus smells of me. Either way, it isn’t pleasant. Unlike tonight’s particularly fresh-smelling gig, in which the Wire’s three day celebration of the new slipped into the Freudian, slapping its Oyster Card against the reader for a voyage into the realms of the uncanny.

If I’d spent too long trying to analyse exactly what was meant by that description, I’d have probably ended up on the couch myself. And even if I had, would I have worked out how this excellent performance from Thomas Ankersmit fitted in? Ankersmit has previously collaborated with the likes of Jim O’Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Phill Niblock and Alvin Lucier, but today he flew solo on electronics and saxophone. He began in crisp Raster-Noton style mode, all glitchy patterns and dog-whistle bleep, quiet enough that the sound of a band playing downstairs entered the mix (a strangely pleasing effect). The set then took a much more physical turn. Ankersmit was up to his elbows in a box of gadgets, twisting and grinding, releasing a serious of harsh metallic drones and airy hisses – it was almost like he was driving an old stream train up there. This built noisily and compellingly, Ankersmit finally reaching for his alto to play long low notes, reveling in the clashing textures and frequencies that this produced.

Given the praise that I’ve been lavishing on the work of Leyland Kirby aka The Caretaker, I’d been looking forward to seeing him do his thing live. Except I couldn’t see him. Where was he? Ah, there he was, hunched over behind the piano, in the far corner of the stage, in the dark. When you are about 6 foot tall, and with a giant mop of hair, it is pretty difficult to make yourself disappear on a stage the size of the Vortex’s despite Kirby’s best efforts. But why was he doing it? Did he not want us to see what he was doing up there? Was he making some sort of point about absence or loss? Was he worried about that hairdo blocking the visuals? Or was he just in fact a bit shy? Initially I actually found the lengths he had gone to to hide quite distracting, but gradually the tendrils of music and visuals seeped into my brain. The backdrop of dancers slowly melting away into the ether complemented Kirby’s time-ravaged romanticism perfectly. From crackling, slowed-down jazz records to dense orchestral swells, from minimal hushed piano records to loud, savage noise, this ripped at the heartstrings like the best of his work, the stench of dreams gone sour filling the room. If it lacked anything, it was that human presence on stage, that additional emotional focal point – I’m thinking of Philip Jeck here, eyes closed and nodding gently behind the turntables, losing himself in the music. Kirby finished, appropriately enough, with a piece entitled “London Town You Haunt Me Night And Day” (available on this mix he did for The Wire) remaining hunched and hidden as the last notes faded away, almost as if he too wished to simply vanish.

Broadcast then appeared on stage to close the festivities by performing a live soundtrack to a film by Ghost Box’s Julian House. Anyone who had come expecting a traditional Broadcast set (and I’m convinced that there were a fair few, given how heavily subscribed this event was) may have been a little disappointed by the lack of familiar songs, sounds, lyrics – but despite its brevity, I found this to be a superbly focused set. House’s stunning retro-styled visuals whirled in monochrome behind, an increasingly busy collage of circles, spirals and flowers, leading into dark forested jump-cuts. The music built in intensity to match, from antiquated hiss and air raid drone, through fragmented and increasingly frantic synth melodies, with the spectral vocal tones of Trish Keenan drifting in and out. After a dark and grainy middle section appeared a relentless rhythm, a clattering charge headlong into a nightmare of exploding stars on the screen behind, which finally shattered into a flurry of bleeps and wails. This collaboration with Julian House marks a successful foray into the experimental for Broadcast, creating a sound at once familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar. If their forthcoming album collaboration on Warp is successful as this slice of the uncanny, I for one cannae wait to hear it.