Originally published at kemptation.com on 19 May 2015. Words by Richard Kemp. Photos by Aidy Brooks

Once you get close enough, the sound of Motion, Bristol’s leading underground music venue, pulsates all around you, echoing off houses, warehouses and rushing along the grubby wet floor of each underlit street. It feels a little like you’re making your way up a hill in the dark, toward one of those old creepy hotels from a horror film, or the lair of a mad scientist. Get close enough, though, and it’s something else entirely. More like a biker den in a post-apocalyptic B-movie.

Scores of punters line the outside of the bustling club, some buying Slush Puppies, others waiting for the portaloos to open. Others still lean against the walls, drinks in hand, laying to waste any memory of a largely unmemorable working week. Inside, Motion is a labyrinth of sweaty, wet caves juxtaposed with intermittent, bright lights and throngs of people needing propping up every which way. Tonight, people are here to forget their troubles, forget their responsibilities and, most importantly, forget themselves.

French DJ troupe Chinese Man play to a sea of enlightened wanderers who, tonight, leave whoever they were at the door to jive together as one. The trio bring with them a mass of equipment and enough MCs to cover half the venue. The stage itself is flooded in light and smoke, often blinding the audience’s view, while flanking it are two dazzling pieces of artwork: totem heads made from a collage of digitised leaves. The sharp eyes of each electronic head pulsates with every pound of bass.

The smoke hadn’t really cleared by the time Chinese Man started their set, which left some people scratching their heads and wondering whether this was the group they had come to see tonight. Many simply followed their ears.

Chinese Man play to a sea of enlightened wanderers who, tonight, leave whoever they were at the door to jive together as one

Fans of Chinese Man are generally enticed by the group’s melding of cultures, influences and styles: electronic beatsmithing, hip-hop, jazz and Asian rhythms. It’s all there with Chinese Man. And so it was difficult to get that excited when they started with the dubstep. Perhaps the threepiece wanted to please the regular crowd, the ones that come to Motion every week to dance like strung-out zombies. Nevertheless, it was different to what the average Chinese Man fan thought they were coming for. The overuse of bass does have its good points, however, and certainly gave the venue reason to light up its hypnotic totem heads and send further punters into blissed-out trances. Plenty of Groove Sessions material came out, too (classics and soon-to-be classics), many with live MCing.

Such trying intrusions are minimal in their gripe, however, when you have the likes of Krafty Kuts & A-Skillz on second. Veterans of the live circuit, the duo had no qualms with giving the audience exactly what they wanted – and, indeed, what they didn’t know they wanted. When a DJ puts on Queen‘s Flash Gordon, for example, it’s pretty customary to look around and check you haven’t walked into a cheese night by mistake. There were hefty boos as Kuts & Skillz tried just this. However, before people even had time to throw their hands up in disbelief and walk out, the pair had cut the first ‘Flash’ in with a rolling bass and turned it into one of the most irresistible dance lines ever blasted through speakers that had electronic totem heads on either side. Such talent can be jaw-dropping at times. That and the duo had a plethora of dancing ladies in front of them.