Delete @ Gwdihw, Cardiff
Sun 31 July
After Delete left a few people disappointed that last month’s booking of Ben Sims was under that techno mainstay’s house-and-disco-designated alias, Ron Bacardi, they’ve stuck to their guns and pulled the same trick again. Robert Hood was a founding member of the Detroit techno pioneers Underground Resistance with ‘Mad Mike’ Banks, in Detroit in the late 80s. The crew were the Public Enemy of the US rave era, black jumpsuits and facemasks a dramatic backdrop to the visionary futurism they created with synthesizers and drum machines. So Hood has long been a lynchpin of real techno, since its earliest days, and his solo career has never stopped innovating and setting the pace, while the Floorplan name gets used for his more exuberant and house-leaning stuff. Now he’s brought in his daughter, Lyric, to form a duo. (There’s precedent for family-run techno-soul outfits in Detroit; Octave One is the Burden brothers, Lenny and Lawrence, sometimes joined by Lynell, Lorne and Lance.)
They’ve just put out the album Victorious, which has received enthusiastic acclaim and marks a new chapter in this story of musical genius. The first single from the album, {Tell You No Lie}, is a hi-NRG, strings’n’vocals disco track, pumped up with loopy editing and banging drums. That’s the right tone for a garden rave, surely.
Tickets: £22. Info: 09 2039 7933
words GWYN THOMAS DE CHROUSTCHOFF