Live Review: Nosaj Thing, D.Tiberio - Bowler Bar

D.Tiberio starts off heavy: dense, rolling bass and high-pitched sine waves collide, while distended vocals slip in and out and skittering hats provide a tempo.

It's not really dance-floor-friendly – too prone to dropping back to ambience, never quite peaking – but he manages the careful balance between experimental and accessible well: alongside attractive arpeggios are piercing synth-stabs that swell until they dominate almost painfully, but always cut out just before they overwhelm. There are excellent transitions between the pieces, and it all feels as though it's building to something massive.

After half-an-hour though, the set still seems trapped somewhere between listening and dance music, never quite settling into either style, the build fading away to nothing too often to attract further attention. Regrettably, technical problems also intrude, and while the laptop only drops out for a minute or two, and D.Tiberio is able to slide back into his set smoothly, it's an unfortunate break in the mood that the set never quite recovers from.

The sound up the back is great tonight, but on the dance floor the bass overwhelms the music, and it sounds like the volume is running up against the limits of either the PA or the space. Each act is cloaked in darkness on the stage, and with the light show reduced to a couple of swinging spotlights over the crowd, this is a gig entirely without spectacle.

The music is dark, almost smothering at times, and perhaps that's the aesthetic being aimed for. The nicest thing that can be said is that it doesn't actively hinder the performance.

Nosaj Thing (Jason Chung) is tonally similar to his openers, and following on from two-and-a-half hours of the same style, his set runs the risk of monotony. Within the first ten minutes though, he has set himself apart by the skill and precision with which he's layering tracks. No single song sticks around for long, instead flowing effortlessly across and into the next, often after a minute or less. Even a version of Eclipse/Blue, which provides an early highlight, is brief and stripped back, reduced to snare, rim hits and voice.

Despite the increased intricacy, this is also a much more focused set and Chung shows a deft hand at building gradually across multiple tracks, actually reaching a peak, and he seems content to settle into a body-heavy set. There are still the intricate, unsettled beats and arpeggios that are particular to the scene, but there's also a steady bass beat beneath everything, which gives the crowd something to move to, and they oblige, entranced until the final notes fade away.