He could not have failed. At the tipping point of the Bank Holiday weekend, on Brighton's best sound system, facing a crowd already hyped to delirium by Johnny Rock's superb warm up DJ set; Pascal Arbez aka "Vitalic" was perfectly poised to clean up. And clean up he did.
Despite a few early technical hitches it didn't take long for the steely Frenchman to bring the capacity crowd to boiling point with a succession of intense builds, pulverising percussion and searing synth lines that made it feel like the whole room was expanding and contracting.
The intensity was unrelenting, but Vitalic's music is as brainy as it is bananas. His astute intelligence was evident in the set programming, switching with ease from hypnotic to brutal whilst keeping the pace varied enough to sustain interest over a 45-minute set.
The biggest cheers of the night were reserved for his hits "My Friend Dario" and seminal "La Rock 01", which was as mind-blowing on Saturday as it was on release in 2001.
Everyone should see Vitalic at some point.
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