Another Sunday of sleep, mild depression and reflection, something I'm sure you are all well familiar with, but worth every spent brain cell, penny and lost hour of sleep after what was another utterly fascinating weekend. I say 'fascinating' as opposed to using an adjective more definitively positive because much like last weekend,this was much more left-field again, especially with regards to the Friday. Granted, fabric Saturday isn't at all a fresh experience, but I had never seen Radio Slave or Shackleton before, both significant attractions for me.

On Friday I made my way out of London, west-bound. A journey to Bristol usually only can mean one thing- Motion, the undisputed heavyweight of the Southwest, and now a regular stomping ground for Bristol-based Chris. Unfortunately, I am confined only to 'special' visits, such as October's Delicatessen, one of my most memorable nights to date. Now I realise that night was a mere shadow of Motion's true character. Modeselektion- the night launched by German duo Modeselektor, touched down for what promised to be an explosive night by the river Avon. Unlike SMD's night which throbbed in only 'The Tunnel' and 'The Cave', Modeselektion would utilize Motion's Warehouse Room- a vast hanger that is also Motion's skateboarding site. It's a quite indescribable feeling entering such a venue. It is literally just a massive steel box with a stage at one end and two bars at the other- one serving drinks, the other serving laughing gas, a clue to Motion's typical clientele. But obviously this is why Motion is so popular, especially in Bristol, a city with a thriving underground music scene and an appetite for the slightly scruffy.

We arrived too late to catch Suriusmo, one of the most underrated producers around, but it wasn't before long that the main attraction stood just feet away from us. I won't bore you with more superlatives regarding Moderat's eponymous debut album, and it's certainly no secret that their live performances rival any other for aural and visual excitement. This is something we discovered for ourselves at EXIT in the summer, but this was in a very, very different environment. As we wrestled to keep ourselves at the front during their set, we were sent into a frenzy of movement as the trio blew us all away with old favourites such as New Error, Seamonkey, Rusty Nails and Les Grand Marches. Although the odd technical glitch caused momentary panic for the trio, on the whole the performance was otherwise faultless. The sound was as formidable as the venue, but it was the lighting that made it so memorable. Every bassy thump was accompanied by an amalgamation of strobes, lasers and spotlights that blinded those at the front, but made the experience utterly euphoric. There's no question that this eclipsed their performance over in Serbia. Motion is the perfect venue for an act like Moderat, which needs a big room, but craves the intimacy a festival can't provide.

Masked SBTRKT followed after with a claustrophobic hour of bassy, futuristic post-dubstep which was surprisingly very good, setting up Modeselektor who concluded the night with two more hours of a similar breed of beats, mashing up more bass-heavy cross-breeds of dubstep, electro and techno. It wasn't a particularly groovy affair by any means, and there was certainly no eloquence about the sonics that shuddered from the warehouse all night, but impressive it certainly was. Whatever sound Modeselektion represent, and I'm still not entirely sure what to call it, they know how to exploit its crude, rave-worthy credentials to its full ear-splitting potential.

Saturday and it was back to London, and back to fabric. With little sleep under my belt from the night before and still suffering the inevitable side-affects of a wildly hedonistic outing, for the very first time ever I believe, I wasn't in the most spirited of moods before I headed down to fabric, a prospect I thought could heal any ailment. Nonetheless we descended underground once more for another long-haul groove in the abyss where Craig Richards was finishing off one of his superb warm-up sets before Israel's finest, Guy Gerber took the helm on the stage for 2 hours live. As it turned out, his set was the highlight in an otherwise far from memorable fabric Saturday night, and there aren't many of them. Seductively rhythmic, Gerber kept bodies moving from start to finish, particularly when he unleashed his most prominent release to date, the massive Hate/Love which had myself among others singing along feverishly. Over in Room 2 I managed to catch a good chunk of Shackleton's live set, which was as I expected pulsed with all that murky, floor-shaking sub-bass that we have come to expect from both him and fabric's second room. By the time Radio Slave took the ropes in Room 1, the dancefloor had thinned out considerably, and those that were left didn't really look the type to appreciate Slave's elegance on the decks, seamlessly flowing through snappy minimal techno and slightly mellower house. Despite the line-up's considerable promise, this unfortunately doesn't rank among some of EC1's finest, but lets all remember, this is fabric, so it does have its own ranking system of course....