Clubbing Highlights – February 2011

Dance music, by definition, is not supposed to be soothing. Your parents and neighbours certainly do not find it soothing. Oily massages; avuncular Morgan Freeman monologues; White Ladder: these are soothing. Dance music is, on a superficial level, engineered to plead to your base, atavistic desires. Take your reptilian yearning to shneck the neon-bathed object of your fleeting, drunken fancy, the aesthetically offensive high-viz playground of 90s acid house, or the oasis of sweat and oxytocinal bonhomie at Xplicit. 

Darkstar – like many of their Hyperdub labelmates – are busy revising this particular line of argument. North, their debut longplayer released at the end of last year, is perhaps the most idiosyncratic manifestation yet of what Kode9 calls the "hardcore continuum". The dance music textures within the lunar wooziness of In The Way and the rat-tat-tat snares of Deadness reveal themselves in glimpses rather than gazes, and most of these textures orbit the album's much-lauded centrepiece, Aidy's Girl Is A Computer. That said, a trip to Nice 'N' Sleazy's on Wed 16 February - particularly for dance music novices – presents an inviting in-road to the innovative, becalming possibilities of the trio.

Sneaky Pete's offer more familiar clubs territory for their second Numbers night on Fri 25 February. A forthcoming Fabriclive mix in May should serve to consolidate Jackmaster’s standing as one of the UK’s, if not Europe’s, most genuinely exciting DJs. Modeselektor, Drexciya and Robin S are all equals in a blissfully inclusive record bag that bursts, like a lovingly overstuffed donner kebab peering out of its Styrofoam cradle, with techno, garage, hip-hop and house cutlets aplenty. Look out for another excellent Numbers lineup in Stereo on Fri 18 February with Jackmaster, Deadboy and Joy Orbison.

Bigfoot’s Tea Party host a leaner, though no less edifying affair on Fri 4 February at the Glasgow Art School. Hosting M_nus’ Ambivalent at the Art School last December should remove any lingering doubts as to their credentials for swinging dick status, with or without a headliner to supplement their always-transfixing visuals, though in this instance, Daniel Steinberg’s primary coloured techno should raise the bar(tab) higher still.

Compakt offer a starker set of rhythms on Friday 11 February at Cabaret Voltaire. Headliner Edit Select’s ghostly, dungeon techno smoulders beneath low frequencies that invoke the spirit of Basic Channel’s dubbier leanings. Support comes in the wispy shapes of Siren, Gabriel Kemp, DD, Bruno FK and DJ Phrase, a combination likely to elicit copious splashes of ectoplasm and other paranormal sweat juice on the ceiling.

Speaking of soiled ceilings, the Sub Club’s Polyfilla-slurping fist magnet will soon be in need of another hasty repair job as a brace of techno delights begins with Raresh on Fri 18 February at Sensu. Already a bit of a godhead in his native Romania, Raresh draws frequent comparisons to Ricardo Villalobos, mostly on the pretext that the former favours a similarly slinky, hedonistic blend of techno and tech-house. They also have the same hair. Handily, you can judge such comparisons for yourself: Villalobos will be flicking his titanium strength fringe for your pleasure at Subculture in the first week of March (Fri 4 Feb).