A handful of Warp mainstays and hangers on hit Japan on Friday June 10. The gig was about 20 minutes out of Tokyo at Kawasaki’s Club Citta. It was a rainy night that started at dinner with a crew of Australian electro fans en route to Sonar. Then to La Cittadella, which is like Italiantown Disneyland style, complete with a lit-up transparent Tower of Pisa.

On entry, the door girl asked if we had cameras. I said yes, so they asked me to drop it in a box. I looked at the pile of cameras and said actually I don't have a camera, so she waved me through.

Citta has amazing sound, for what is essentially a huge rectangle box, especially considering that the bar was solidly packed from the front to the back. We could barely squeeze in.

Rob Hall from Skam was DJing complex electronics leaning more to the melodic rather than abrasive end of the spectrum. It's funny seeing people spinning glowsticks to abstract electronic music. Out in the foyer, the merchandise stall had every Warp CD and LP you could want, well not everything, but loads of great stuff, even the Boards of Canada promo kaleidoscope. Crowds of Japanese indie kids milled about the foyer.

Mark Bell started with a dark repetitive break that gradually decayed into grinding industrial. The hordes of bright flashing lights, both above the crowd, and the mobile phones floating about (people exploit their light to find their way about the crowd), contrasted sharply with the dark music. The foreboding synths, freaky laugh samples and noisy clatter sounded like Front 242. But eventually the mood lightened as ravey siren stabs, big synths and plenty of bleeps signaled the set’s end. The bleep anthem, and Bell’s LFO calling card, with its stripped back bleep happy beats and the BBC-intoned vocal, L.F.O.

The lights went out. We had to hold hands to stay together attempting to squeeze back into the room, via the back right-hand door. We were wedged against the back corner. Autechre were spreading a fabric of twisted electronic shapes, shards of noise and deep bassy grooves. Sure they were often wobbly, syncopated or even off kilter, but they were far from arrhythmic.

Autechre's sound is uncompromisingly abstract, but the thousands of Japanese hands in the air during a particularly brutal section of the set can attest to its impact. At other times influences poke through the mix. One messy Machine Drum/Merck-esque section gradually shows up a lineage from Detroit techno, the sparkling high hats and melody breaking out over a hip hop beat.

The duo have loads of imitators on record, but noone can touch them live. Even Funkstorung, who I saw in Paris a few years ago, needed bootleg pop to make it work. In a recent review, Michael Gill wrote that he knew Isolee’s Wearemonster was an excellent record from the first time he heard it; but after listening to the last few Autechre records dozens of times, he still can’t determine if they are filled with genius or crap.

It is a fair call. It’s a perplexing area. They set the template for this kind of abstract angular music, and despite the loads of imitators, there is simply noone else to use as a yardstick. But, if you can forgive the cliché, live it really makes sense.

We found our way out of the club, past hundreds of sleeping clubbers, hunched over and waiting for the first train of the morning. We sat about the foyer too, chatting about Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas on cultural capital and authenticity in music, especially with Detroit vs British techno (black vs white, middle class vs working class). Fascinating, but at 4:45 we were back on the train to Jiyugaoka.