PLEASUREKRAFT/SPEKTRE
High-Fi @ The Vaults, Cardiff Bay
Sat 29 Feb
…And we’re back! Not in time for Vaults’ first output of the year, but definitely for the biggest so far: Pleasurekraft and Spektre, both of the former’s own Kraftek label, which is absolutely rushed off its feet booking big lovely joint UK tours for its star acts and pushing the term ‘cosmic techno’. The label bosses postulate that within this forbidden celestial genre “pulses a heart that yearns toward a greater understanding of the cosmos and our humble place within it,” and if you take your techno clean, with plenty of ping-pong reverb and a synth sound so thick that one class-action lawsuit would see the label permanently renamed as “John Carpenter’s Kraftek”, then you’re probably already halfway there.
It is lovely, though. In the interests of self-actualisation or interstellar travel, Pleasurekraft have been chasing their decade long career with frightening new recent hits in tracks like Prison Planet and Alien Body Double (have you spotted a theme yet?), and along with Leeds lads Spektre dominate the space-tech niche (just ahead of NASA). With whopping stream figures large enough for the acts to be considered ambassadors for modern techno in the US and UK respectively, the spread of the astral message is apparently far from over, as both acts come gunning hard with new material as we flip over to space year 2020.
Spektre have their brand new album Against A Dark Background to peddle, while Pleasurekraft are riding high from last year’s Drumcode outing (with an Adam Beyer/Layton Giordani/Green Velvet remix), Space Date, still furiously giddy about getting to work on another track about space. Keen to spread the love, Cardiff Bay is just one titchy footnote in a more supermassive tour for the Pleasurekraft boys, who have been touching astro-boots down in the Americas, Asia and Europe in a global invasion almost constantly for well over a year and are showing no signs of slowing. Cosmic techno and the astral learnings therein will be available for your own enlightenment at the end of February. words JASON MACHLAB
Tickets: £13-£17.50. Info: vaultspresents.com
