The sounds swirling around Sheffield Cathedral rumble with a brooding and malevolent air. Drones whirr like helicopter blades and icy electronics pierce the air as Blackhaine delivers his inimitable Lancastrian social-realist avant-rap. His guttural screams are so intense you wonder if the stained glass windows could shatter. He and his crew even manage to force a circle pit among the audience, in the exact place that worshippers will be sitting silently for afternoon prayers the following day.
It’s a remarkably intense first act to see at No Bounds, a festival now in its sixth year that has already become an unmissable date in the dance music calendar. Operating primarily out of Hope Works, an old first world war gun barrel factory, the festival has stretched even further across the city this year, from opening up a still-functioning electricity substation in a towering brutalist building, to linking up with numerous DIY and independent venues across the city.
