Damo Suzuki is best known for his work with experimental German group Can. In recent years he has been on an endless world tour performing as Damo Suzuki's network. As he tours he plays live improvisational music with various local musicians. For this and a few other dates he was joined by Drum Eyes, something of a Japanese super group led by Brighton based Japanese ex-patriot, DJ Scotch Egg. This included occasional members of Trencher and internationally renowned Japanese art-rock collective The Boredoms. His return to Cambridge was a night of powerful experimental music from start to finish.

Doors didn't open at the Portland until after nine but as the first punters filed in there was already a fitting atmosphere. The room was bathed in light from a disco ball and a sound track of electronica and prog rock. It wasn't long before local opening act, The Resistance, took to the stage. A thick darkness descended on the room broken by a swirling psychedelic light show that projected onto a screen and across the bodies of the black-clad band members, who performed just the right kind of music for that atmosphere. The songs grew longer and more intense. The frontman juggled vocal duties with beer swigging and tambourine shaking, then began to move off stage lurching across the floor feeding his words unrelenting into the mic. Maybe The Resistance owe a little too much to their predecessors Primal Scream and The Jesus and Mary Chain, but it was an exhilarating set. When the opening act is this good you know it's going to be a great night! Drum Eyes followed this with electric guitar wailing over a heavy bed of percussion and DJ Scotch Egg adding loops and embellishments with a bank of keyboards and effects processors. Later he took up bass adding to the volume and creating a mesmerizing wall of sound.

After a break they were joined by Damo Suzuki for the finale. Suzuki seemed to grow in stature as he stepped up to the mic. With a decisive nod the band started a thunderous backing track on top of which Suzuki delivered intense and indecipherable bouts of chanting, clutching the mic stand and bowing his head in between as if struggling to remain up right in the centre of a sonic maelstrom. Though billed as an improvised performance it was remarkably tight and well structured. The intensity reminded me of another Japanese musician Merzbow who I once heard create an unnerving distorted electronic soundscape in a dark stuffy basement in Osaka. The band didn't stop once --- the sound intensified, evolved and took on different textures and patterns. Suzuki looked as if he was possessed, pouring his indecipherable words out to the masses; face about to melt. It would have been an unsettling experience with little pleasure for many people but those who chose to be there got what they wanted. For twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, the pulsating performance continued, then stopped and with a quick goodbye Damo Suzuki left the stage to continue his world tour building his network.