Now in its second year, No Bounds has established itself as a powerful new entry in the UK’s electronic music calendar. Set in Sheffield, a city long synonymous with pioneering electronic sounds, No Bounds has created an outlet to carry that tradition forwards. Spread over three days, local promoters Algorave and Off Me Nut take over the opening night to offer up wonky basslines, stomping techno and rapid-fire drum’n’bass. However, it’s the crammed Saturday when the festival truly comes alive. During the day there are DJ workshops, build-your-own-synth sessions, algorithmic drum circles, and South Yorkshire’s own radical artist Mark Fell curates a stage.
The leading trolls of experimental electronic music on Twitter, Wanda Group, play an enveloping mid-afternoon set filled with drones, cracks, bleeps, moans and drips. It pulsates like intensified environmental noise and harsh ambiance, resembling the creaking sounds of an abandoned rave house. Similarly disturbing is Theo Burt’s set of distorted pop music videos accompanied by noises that sound like dropping bombs. The room judders with such ferocity that confetti ribbons lodged in the ceiling from long-ago weddings rain down amid the gut-quivering terror.
Berlin-based DJ rRoxymore plays a taut set, full of slow-build techno with no interest in easy euphoria. The self-described “queen of techno” and “acid house priestess” Volvox plays a set that masterfully glides between those genres, offering iridescent melody alongside drubbing beats. While Volvox’s set feels entirely in service to the groove, Errorsmith’s dismantles it using warped and disruptive rhythms that chew up anything resembling convention.
Bristol duo Giant Swan are as loose and fun as they are forceful, creating a maelstrom of ear-bleed techno and skull-rattling noise. Daniel Avery plays a steadily rousing set of electro and techno that sees the rigid backbone of his beat drive the festival into the early hours. As the full day and night of broad, disobedient and unpredictable programming comes to a close, the vast swirl of sounds floods the brain like a burst dam.
