OK, it’s not snowing. But the other two major disasters that can hit a small time promoter have befallen the Psychotechnic League’s inaugural gig, namely the loss of two thirds of the lineup a few days before the event, and the presence of a similar, but more upscale event within jacking distance of the venue, in the shape of Audioscope’s Andrea Parker and Shitmat booking at The Cellar. It’s a tribute to promoting virgin Fred Toon that he not only managed to keep his gig afloat, but managed to draw in a decent, if not earth-shattering huddle of punters who were clearly enjoying the evening.

And as such, it would be harsh to be too critical of Kinetic Wardrobe, one of the stand-in acts, left playing unusually early to encourage an attendance at both the Wheatsheaf and the Cellar, and certainly his late 90s post-Orbient down-tempo techno set is full of well-turned moments, but some of the sampled gobbets (as The History Boys’ Mr Irwin might have put it, were he an aging raver) that stitch the set together are beyond hackneyed. What’s that? Fear & Loathing? Be still, my beating heart. But in fairness, it’s a solid set, with some surprisingly approachable grooves, a couple of tracks with scratchy guitar parts sounding like lost De La Soul remixes.

Whatever you might expect from a band called Space Heroes Of The People, you probably don’t expect poise and delicacy, but this is exactly what the superlative duo delivers. Yes, the music is built on an insistent club thump, and Tim looks like he’s dressed as a day-glo swimming instructor, but the music is crisp, intricately thought out, and delivered with a surprising lightness of touch. That the fascinating Soviet animations projected behind the band are often perfectly in sync shows that the bad have thought carefully about the onstage presentation, but they still manage to retain a whiff of that old live magic, peppering the music with real-time drumfills, double bass and Wii remote waggles. Neither brainlessly retro nor obsessed by dance sub-genre novelty, neither gimcrack cabaret performers nor whey-faced techno dullards, Space Heroes are purveyors of a polished, elegant electro you never knew you craved, an oasis between endless torrents of bedroom boredom low rate MP3s and Dadstep dance revivalists. Weirdly, with their tight quality control and the nous to make classically simple music feel new with subtle arrangements, the local band Space Heroes most resemble is Little Fish. But Space Heroes are better.

We Are Ugly But We Have The Music, the promoter’s laptop acid project, in some ways retreads the drawbacks of Kinetic Wardrobe (such as a fucking stupid name, for starters), offering solid, but unsurprising dance throwbacks delivered by an awkward looking man with a laptop. But whether it’s because the set is slightly more uptempo, whether it’s because Fred’s drum sounds are that little bit crunchier, or whether it’s because he has a smiley T-shirt and a big old strobe, the We Are Ugly set is more satisfying. It’s true that he hasn’t really worked out a reason to hear this rave-robbing music live, rather than on record, but somebody shamelessly reliving their youth is rarely this entertaining. Having made some strong music, and salvaged a gig that looked likely to collapse, Fred must have finished the evening with a self-congratulatory grin, even if most of the assembled finished their evening at The Cellar.