Chaos is good. And any arts festival that promises “a 21st century happening of lawless disorder and diversity” should be a recipe for mayhem. What the first night of NERVE actually gives the gathered art schoolers, clubbers and society darlings is a bit more challenging. Little wonder some people choose to play computer games and mill around the bar rather than face the musical mischief of Richard H Kirk. He still makes live techno sound disturbing.
Formerly one half of Sheffield industrial pioneers Cabaret Voltaire, Kirk is in a typically uncompromising mood – transfixing those brave enough to stand the breakbeat, noise and synchronised visuals overload with a new music that purges and exorcises as much as it stimulates the central nervous system.
Daring enough to use heavy sound sources – that range from field recordings of land warfare to mangled hip-hop and askew reggae – Richard Kirk remains as leftfield as ever.
Such a hothouse performance leaves Detroit techno kingpin Kenny Larkin with no choice but to calm things down by giving the dancers, for a few minutes at least, something more familiar. Soon enough, though, he embarks on a DJ odyssey to the farthest reaches of electronica. What he provides is nothing less than a compact history lesson in the possibilities of samplers and synthesisers. It’s most welcome.