Playing as first band in Sheffield's massive Octagon Centre is no great privilege. It usually involves playing your instruments in the unaccomodating spaces not occupied by the gear of mightier bands, on a massive stage in the cavernous surroundings of the imposing Octagon, to a fifty strong audience to whom in interest terms you lie fourth behind their beer, the pattern of the Octagon floor and the bogey in their left nostril. And it doesn't matter how many times you say 'Yo' or start clapping - they aint gonna dance. So Hybrid, supporting band to Groove Armada and Faithless, did pretty good considering. Hybrid are essentially a sound system, so watching them perform is nothing much on watching the people in your office at work on their PCs, but at the end of the day it's what comes out of those speakers that counts. And the buzzed up Octagon crowd appreciated the impressive block busting beats that Hybrid were producing. The music was well and truly visceral, my liver and heart country dancing, each beat crunching inside your ears, the fragments perforating your ear drums for life. Hybrid are a band however who need to make up their mind as to what they are about. Half way into the act a female tunesmith entered centre stage, writhing like a snake, dressed in a costume which suggested that she was queen of the Planet Zog. A cynic could be forgiven for assuming that the visuals were supposed to make up for five or six below par Hybrid tunes. And the lyrics that came out from the mouth of what seemed to be a Shirley Bassey would-be were quite frivolous and superfluous. There seemed to be no point. So Hybrid are a band with a lot of thinking to do, and a lot of working to do. One of the last tracks that they stunned the crowd with, Unfinished Symphony, is the way forward, a violin strewn symphony that takes your breath away. If Hybrid aren't going to get lost in the interminable mist of mediocre techno they're gonna have to make a niche for themselves. Operatic trance must be the way forward.

Mike Williams