At 24, Bradfordian Nia Archives has already clearly marked out her musical territory.

While many of her Gen Z contemporaries have embraced the rave, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds of the early-mid 1990s, she’s done it more wholeheartedly than most: particularly rebuilding the rolling breakbeats and deep bass of jungle as a kind of British urban folk music, collaborating with older generations (original junglists DJ Die and Randall of Watch The Ride), and demonstrating how her natural Caribbean-influenced Yorkshire vocal articulation fits perfectly into that. 

Tom “Squarepusher” Jenkinson has covered a lot of ground over three decades, from dank cellar ambience to refined baroque composition, and from chirpy funk to monstrous noise. But his default mode is instantly recognisable: 170+ beats per minute jungle / drum’n’bass-adjacent breakbeats, squelching acid techno synths, high drama rave chords, all with him playing jazz fusion bass guitar over the top like a maniac.

Shaun Ryder is now known mostly for being Shaun Ryder, via any random TV programme that will pay him a couple of quid. In this light, his musical achievements have lost some of their shine over the decades. But, if given the chance, a couple of those Happy Mondays albums and the first Black Grape album still own the room.

There are musicians on the UK dance underground who doggedly identify with particular scenes and evolve with them. There are those who adapt stylistically in order to move from scene, or manage to be part of several at the same time. And then there is Londoner Danny Native aka Altered Natives. He is truly the outsider’s outsider.

The KLF are endlessly fascinating. There’s never been a “pop group” like them. From the late Eighties into the early Nineties, they treated music, especially electronic dance music, as a laboratory for lunatic experiment. Unlike most avant-garde thinkers in pop, though, they made a glorious and highly unlikely commercial success of it, via a series of globally successful singles (and, to some degree, the album, The White Room).

Bradford unit Bad Boy Chiller Crew blew up from a regional scene which combined jokey lo-fi videos, a bangin’ fusion of UK garage and hard house (“bassline house” as they termed it), and grime-style rapping in local accents.

Since first coming together in 1989, The Chemical Brothers have done more than enough to earn their place in the Pantheon of Rave Legends. They may not have been there at the birth of Acid House, but six number one albums, 13 top 20 singles and six Grammy awards is nothing to be sniffed at – especially for a couple of nerdy blokes who basically push buttons on boxes of electronic gadgets.

Early on in this arena gig by New Order, a youthful, enthusiastic voice could be heard to say gleefully, “They’re just so 80s!”. That statement was both accurate and yet also misleading, for as this near two-hour performance showcased New Order’s music is both of that decade and yet above it. 

The Chemical Brothers are unstoppable. Their live shows are a guaranteed monster good time, redolent of proper old-school rave-ups, but with visual tech from some freaky eye-boggling future. Their last album, 2019’s No Geography, was a total belter. Their latest, their tenth, is also a total belter. They do what they do. But they do it so bloody well.

“This wasn’t the day to wear white suede boots,” says Django Django’s singer Vincent Neff, midway through the band’s Friday evening set.

He’s not kidding.