“Great Ytene are a band built upon deconstruction and reassembly”. So says the first line from their Bandcamp page and this is an accurate indicator of their live performance as well as their latest album Locus, which the band released last February. The album sees the band becoming more industrial sounding, more experimental. It’s gained very positive reviews across the board setting expectations high for tonight. The band allegedly lost an album's worth of material back in 2015 in a “technological wormhole” and as a result started again with a clean slate, giving us Locus in 2017.

The show opens with a very strong support from The Soft Walls playing a solo set. It’s a brilliantly intense way to start the night off, the one-man show is very impressive featuring plenty of improvisation. The backing is all created using looped drum machines along with various synths and an ambient echoing vocal. You’re unable to pick out a single lyric but that seems to be the point, it’s all about sonic experimentation and not a typical ‘song’ construct.

Innerstrings have provided the stage display at The Hope & Ruin tonight. It's been shining on all the preceding bands and now bathes Great Ytene in its psychedelic light, lending a dreamy ambience. The room is at a healthy capacity, it’s not a lively audience but one that stands absorbed by the magnificent display and the music they are watching.

Great Ytene start out strongly, tearing into their first song of the night and leading us to expect high energy and impact for the rest of the evening. Starting this strongly will prove to be a problem later on in the set as energy levels dwindle somewhat. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere for the band to go after such a raucous opener and the set suffers slightly for this.

Their music is experimental and industrial and, in a live scenario, it doesn’t quite hit the sound they achieved on Locus. The album sounds cleaner and more focused; live, the effects used tended to drown the band out at certain points. The songs wash into one under a heavy blanket of distortion and echoing vocals, which in small doses works very well. However for me at least, the initial impact is lost at the halfway point. It’s the calmer songs that get slightly lost in the mix while attention is taken up by the visuals.

Having said that, when all the elements do come together, the results are brilliant. The music and visuals mesh together very well and it really makes the show work as a visual piece as well as a concert. When the band push, they push hard and it really hits, becoming all the more powerful. Songs like ‘George Street’ work very well, where the verses are slightly washy but held together with a tight punchy chorus that stops things getting too messy.

Overall tonight's gig was very well considered. All the elements worked together with the support acts and the visuals setting the tone for a very exciting evening. At moments the production didn’t do the band justice live, with effects sometimes overpowering an otherwise solid set. Great Ytene showed ambition in trying to recreate live the studio finish of Locus in a small venue. When they did pull it off, it became all the more effective.

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Twitter: twitter.com/greatytene