But it’s the last performance that has me absolutely enthralled: Kevin Belchdom at the SonarComplex. A digital camera focuses on the stage and projects its raw image as a backdrop for the Kristen Erickson’s performance. We can all tell at a glance that Kristen’s a strange creature, she comes onstage with her laptop and starts singing an off tune song with a distinct childish edge and goes on to perform a bizarre repertoire which I’m at a loss to describe. It’s pop, but not like we know it, it’s more like the massacre of pop. And I just can’t tell you the delight with which I watched Whitney Houston’s blood shed all over the stage as she tore through an excruciating cover of I will always love you.

If you thought that Whitney’s version never seemed to reach the end, wait for this one. Whenever Kristen seems to have reached the end picks up again, and again and again. I think I lost count after the twentieth time she almost finished the song. It takes quite an advanced sense of humour and had one guy literally shedding tears of laughter every time she bursts into yet another chorus of “and aaaaaaaa-i-aiiiiiiiii” (see photo) Superb, truly brilliant, especially to a lover of bad taste like myself.

Kevin Blechdom © Advanced Music

Damn! It’s almost ten o’clock! That just about gives me time to rush home, drop my shit off and head straight to sonar by night. Bjork’s on at 11:15 and by the time we get there the queue to get in is huge. When we get in she’s already started and everyone’s literally running to get a decent spot. The last time I saw Bjork was about ten years ago at Glastonbury and she was about four pixels high from where I stood. The SonarClub is so vast that this time she’s not much taller: an inch and a half at the most, and being short sighted sure doesn’t help. It seems a bit pointless to be looking at a screen at a live gig but then again there’s really no comparison between listening to this on your humble hi-fi at home and hearing it here. We’re not talking about any old Roland sampler, we’re talking about Bjork’s voice which is enough to make your hair stand on end when she tries. And she does.

Bjork © Advanced Music

The visuals are great but perhaps we would have liked something a bit more elaborate than the four videos that were played and the fireworks at the front of the stage. But much to my delight this is no greatest hits session and there are a couple of tunes I don’t think I’ve heard before. Hunter blurs the line between artist and character, it’s so very her as she hops across the stage as the pixie she is, and it’s a delight to Batchelorette and Hyperballad live for the first time. All is full of love isn’t accompanied by Chris Cunningham’s superb video, I guess it’s all too tightly synchronised to work on stage. But the one song that really moves me is Human Behaviour during which Bjork’s voice modulations shoot right through my head in subtle waves of green and yellow. In fact the song sounds so good that it’ll keep me company for days to come whenever there’s a moment’s silence and the little sampler in my ears decides to play back some loops. But just 18 songs after she started, Bjork leaves the stage and there seems to be no time for encores. It felt too short after so much expectation and a lot of people feel a little short changed, myself included.

Aphex Twin © Advanced Music

Oxide & Neutrino are the only live set to come tonight, which seems a bit lame, but they’re not on for another two and a half hours so it looks like DJ Vadim’s gonna be in charge for a while. But to my horror my musical nightmare’s back: Mucho Muchacho. He’s a Catalan rapper who in spite of his near absence of talent, gets on well with Vadim so they usually perform together. But what Vadim obviously doesn’t realise is the emptyness and banality of his rhymes. So we try to kill time for a while until DJ Krush starts but none of my friends can take it for much longer. I would have loved to last long enough to see the ever terrifying Aphex Twin, but they’re right: this sucks and we’d better go home and get some sleep.