Andy Stott + Ninos du Brasil + Primitive Art

The road to redemption for Milan's flagging live-music scene runs through an unlikely stretch of outskirts near Linate: here, like a little gem tucked among snow- and slush-lined industrial complexes, lie the rooms of Buka club, once home to a record label's headquarters. And it's here, too, that a small pre-Christmas miracle takes shape – courtesy of S/V/N/ (the team behind the Savana Underground series) – in a night that comes close to perfection in both timing and the quality of its triple bill.

What catches the crowd off guard first is the delightful, almost cinematic location: at the heart of the building sits a futuristic amphitheater entirely carpeted in red, its tiered seating gradually filling up with an audience that starts out fairly composed. Sprawling red lasers sweep across the room, at the center of which stands a raised stage crowded with balloons and the checkered half-moon of the dancefloor.

All the stage elements alone are enough to create an out-of-the-ordinary mood, kicked off by the intriguing duo Primitive Art, who within a few minutes sweep the crowd up with massive rhythms that, at a low level, vaguely recall early Fuck Buttons, while higher up, with all due proportion, they evoke the tribal cauldrons of Shackleton; in short, well beyond the classic warm up for a dance night.

Remarkably short waits separate us from the clou of the event, meaning the enthusiasm doesn't get dissipated in exhausting background-music sessions. So it's quickly time for the unstoppable Ninos du Brasil, Nico Vascellari's project: a concept-band devoted to pure percussive madness – somewhere between Battles and Foot Village – but also, indeed, firmly rooted in certain carioca sonorities, and more generally driven by a playful, festive spirit. Jumps, shouts, maracas, showers of confetti and balloons flying about, combined with an as excessive as effective use of the strobe light, immediately drag the audience into a trip impossible to resist. Not even Andy Stott himself is immune, both admiring and amused as he watches the trio's colourful bacchanal from the stands, before climbing up to the highest booth and kicking off his own set.

It's at this point that the venue's unexpected acoustic potential is fully revealed, shaken from within by the gorgeous bass that England's new star has bestowed upon us with “Luxury Problems”, the current summa of his intense, seductive sound. Jade Boyd's superfluous visuals can do nothing against music that already utterly captivates and invites a “conscious surrender”, at the mercy of impulses that seem anything but contrived. Like the celebrated Burial in a different way, Stott has focused techno music on its most empathetic aspects, bringing a breath of humanity back into the suffocating dancefloors of the 2000s.

The gorgeous vocals of “Numb” and “Hatch The Plan” ensure that the Buka doesn't turn into the usual meathead disco, but a gathering of thinking minds and bodies moving in sync, as if joined in one great sonic embrace. You can crank your subwoofer up as much as you like on the syncopated dub of “Sleepless” or the machine-gun hip-hop of “Up the Box”, but I'm afraid you'll never get what we got that night, literally wrapped in every single beat.

All this was followed by a long dj set that only the fools who'd shown up at the end of the concert bothered to stick around for. The unrepentant ones.

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