Whether a distorting mirror at the service of enlightened disclosure or a fig leaf for those who don’t dare to take a stand, irony is a double-edged knife: impish criticism, and knee-pads worn to retrospectively soften the impact of discursive slip-up or mortifying critique. It’s easy enough to spot irony however, when it’s long since passed the nth degree of self-mockery and frankly avowes its original object – and often enough it is all of it at the same time. In this regard, the opening night of CTM.06 seems paradoxical. For here, under the protective cloak of humorous fog-bombs, serrated sounds will saw at our brain stem and have us shaking all over the dance-floor like long before. Here, "Bold” means not only a musically enthusiastic and sophisticated reappraisal of primary elements in Happy Hardcore, Rave or Acid – genres that were jettisoned as redneck, loutish, lackluster or just plain drugged up. “Bold” is also a sly wink and a smile, absurdly funny and sometimes swiping at tabloid culture – and it’s what all tonight’s performers have in common. Nothing retro about this: it’s the sound of the 303, unbounded live jams, the revival of rave sounds, with a touch here and there of Minimal or Progressive’s structural finesse or the aural candor of Noise. On the visual front we’re waiting up with a rainbow of Pixel explosions, motion picture psycho-stimulants and metamorphic hallucinations: a truly sixties box of tricks and kicks.