Loefah + Pangaea
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Fri 1 June
The mid-to-late 00s saw UK dance music mutate into new forms, with a swathe of producers and DJs marrying creaking bass weight and skeletal rhythms together to shape what would become dubstep. Loefah not only still commands hushed reverence, he dodged the bullet of being absolutely bloody massive like Skream and Benga, going about his own bass-heavy club hype thing without the trappings or constraints of megastardom.
The Swamp81 label boss has been avidly collecting and obsessing over music since the days of hardcore, and when the dubstep hype train started getting ever more overcrowded, Loefah was already starting to push the envelope beyond the 140bpm spectrum. Clwb Ifor manages to be all things to all people in Cardiff – gig venue, go-to venue for a cheeky spontaneous Saturday night out, but it’s perhaps at its best when it’s a bassy sweatbox. And you’re certain to get it here, with a genre-hopping, no-compromise night of music dripping in the history of decades of underground UK music.
Joining Loefah will be Pangea, a mainstay of the game-changing Hessle Audio crew: while Ben UFO might be the one with the busiest DJ schedule, Pangea is the one with the production chops. He’s also a deft DJ, and a dab hand at supplying club-levelling, genre-hopping sonic heaviness of the highest order.
Tickets: £10-£15. Info: 029 2023 2199 (KD)