- The modestly sized conference-room type fixture at the top of The Powerhouse really does seem more like the kinda joint you'd use for a powerpoint presentation rather than a badass dark ambient / industrial rave. Lawrence English did his best to set the mood, even with modest resources. A smoke machine was vomiting obscuring clouds that came wandering down the stairs to meet us as we climbed up to the venue. Most of the punters draped themselves on the carpet while latecomers jostled for standing room at the back of the capacity gig. Lawrence kicked off proceedings hunched behind his deck and well-nigh invisible, sending the quiet crash of distant but gargantuan waves pulsing through the smoke, executing an almost imperceptibly slow build to a roaring peak of sound. The rising and falling contours of Wilderness Of Mirrors surged and retreated across his set, sometimes threatening to engulf the listeners but, with a level of consideration that's unusual amongst experimental sound artists, never actually reaching ear-damaging levels. It was, therefore, even more impressive how much of a physical quality Lawrence was able to bring to the sound, waves of power rolling out of the speakers and massaging the body – it was almost like an interdisciplinary installation. The audience, sprawled on the floor rather than standing around awkwardly, had the perfect vantage point to absorb the experience. As the set entered its final stretch, Lawrence could be seen rocking violently, putting a maniacal focus on some tiny object which he later informed everyone was a Mexican Death Whistle. “All hail the Mexican Death Whistle.” Wilderness Of Mirrors is one of my favourite releases from 2014, very much as Ben Frost's A U R O R A is too. They shared some characteristics, but Frost's is undeniably the more savage and visceral. There's a booming hugeness, an environmental vastness to Lawrence's work that, with Frost, is replaced by fast, primal energy and animalistic aggression. The Iceland-based artist looked the part: wild-eyed and thickly bearded under a mane of tawny blonde hair as he silently took the stage and began the assault. On reflection, Frost was operating under a handicap. The most obvious problem was that the live drummers he worked with on A U R O R A -Guardian Alien's Greg Fox and Swans' Thor Harris were absent from proceedings, stripping away some of that all important physical immediacy. Also A U R O R A might be industrial and soundscaped, but it's dance music: lounging on the carpet just felt more and more inappropriate and uncomfortable as the night went on. I don't know whether Frost felt it too, but he seemed persistently agitated behind his rig, fiddling with the guitar on his back but seeming halfhearted about using it and shaking his leg out of time with the music. Finally, A U R O R A is already a fragmented record, its song-structure unsettlingly strange, but in this performance it felt even more so, the powerful elements failing to bond with the same crushing logic that they did when I first listened. I am only disappointed inasmuch as I really like Frost's music and I came expecting an awful lot from him. There was a whole lot to enjoy here, but I left wondering how much more there could have been. That's especially in contrast to Lawrence English's commanding performance. That night the home team convincingly killed it and the headline act left me hungry for more.

- Chris Cobcroft.