It’s shows the measure of the music when someone can come back from a massive technical fault and still threaten to rip the roof off the place.
Jon Hopkins appears from side stage, like a bumbling comedian, apologising for the absence of visuals after half an hour (an error message began interrupting his Kawaii animated backdrops.) Eventually he gives up on fixing them and gets back to laying waste to Vicar Street, while two dancers with light gadgets appear to be directing air traffic from either side of the stage.
It’s a strong, well choreographed – Hopkins frustration revealing itself to be more understandable as the week goes on.
“You spend thousands on a show and then something like this happens,” he says after.
As said though, it proves no matter to gig goers. ‘Singularity’ bolsters confidence in the notion that Hopkins may well have produced the album of the year. The tempo of Emerald Rush is as intoxicating as ever, with the thousand or so attendees allowing themselves to be swept away by the frenetic energy.
By contrast, set highlight Luminious Beings’ beautiful melody brings the set to a simmering, shimmering half – well, until the encore at least, when things get suitably freaky again.
Some hold firm on the idea that electronic music is only made for a certain kind of person. Hopkins proved on ‘Singularity’ with his cinematic soundscapes that the genre is only as limiting as you see it to be. The same goes for his live shows – Hopkins succeeds in bringing the expansive worlds he’s created within his music and blows them up ten feet tall, even in the smallest of spaces. A technical error such as the one that befell him would have derailed a less confident artist. It helps when you have the content to back it up too, too.