Spot the musician: Richie Hawtin behind visual display at T in the Park 2010 Pic: © Drew Farrell
This is something special, something you immediately wish all festivals were about. A giant curved wall of LEDs is revealed from behind a curtain to whoops and cheers in the dark of the Slam Tent, a single red horizontal line shifting ominously up and down the specially designed architecture as ambient synths find their shape over the pin-sharp sound system.
It's punctuated by a white flash as the distorted percussion makes its presence felt, the bass beat becoming more constant and insistent until the visuals resemble a heartbeat monitor, then shifting into malleable inkblot-style images that blend and weave together.
Richie Hawtin has consistently positioned himself at the bleeding edge of dance music technology, and reassuming his Plastikman monicker recently after a lengthy spell - the last album was seven years ago - he's still redefining what can be achieved within the parameters of minimal techno. For this emergence from exile he’s partnered with visual architects Derivative alongside visual designer Ali Demirel, and the results are spectacularly arresting.
Throughout the thudding bass drum beat and rattling percussion the electronic composer remains only partially visible at certain junctures, lights behind the main structure sometimes illuminating him when gloom momentarily sets, Hawtin always positioned behind the screen of disorientating visuals like a ghostly spectre toying with our experience at his shadowy workstation.
Through the wonders of his own developed technology he's apparently in charges of all aspects of the performance, the visuals he's responsible for so trippy that, were I on anything stronger than a diet coke right now, I'd probably be left clutching my head while lain prone on the floor in a foetal position. During the set I would be, and am, enthralled though.
This sort of dark, claustrophobic headf*** music admittedly may not be to the taste of all, but its intensity translates into the sort of all-encompassing experience few shows can claim to be. The visual aspect begins to break out to other parts of the tent with numerous lights used, spotlights also sparking into life and snaking around the venue’s occupants as the percussion builds. Discernable patterns are linked to specific sounds and sequences, and a circular disc reveals itself in orbit over the stage, appropriately inhabited at one point by an image of what could be another galaxy entirely.
After the main set finishes, darkness descends and the applause builds as Hawtin finally emerges in front of the display to engage the audience as a more physical presence with a mephistophelian Spastik. Most of Plastikman’s lights are fired off furiously like a thousand near-simultaneous camera flashes looped over and over, as the minimal techno classic builds to a tumescent crescendo, all the time utilising few more sounds than a bass drum and a snare, still managing to turn T in the Park’s finale into a truly transcendent experience. Again, this has been something special.
