Tim Hecker / Julianna Barwick @ RNCM, Manchester, 1 April

For a festival concerned with all things digital, the organisers of FutureEverything couldn’t have put together a more innovative pair of musicians than Tim Hecker and Julianna Barwick. In the polite theatre of the RNCM, their processed soundscapes offer us two strikingly different interpretations of the future on what turns out to be an evening of contrast – between Barwick's airy light, and Hecker's oppressive darkness.

Barwick shuffles on stage to the projected backdrop of a red moon, reminiscent of the cover of last year’s album Nepenthe. As she begins to construct her wordless hymns, looping her chants and layering keyboards to harmonise with herself, the anger of the moon begins to melt away, revealing itself as a rotating scope to the universe. With images of stars and nebulae twinkling slowly past our eyes, Barwick’s drones become celestial, a soothing mental massage full of unfathomable space for imagination, flushing sorrow so far inward that it’s obliterated. It’s catharsis in reverse, especially during songs One Half and The Harbinger – her foot-taps echoing through the crowd’s awe-struck silence.

Tim Hecker’s set offers no such human comfort, with him arriving in total darkness in a death robe and gridded mask, his figure a scarcely visible shadow behind his workstation. He moves straight into Virgins’ opener Prism, almost sadistically cranking up the bass thrum until the crowd feel pinned to their seats by the vibration. The technological power is terrifying, exhilarating, and no one applauds because it seems futile. Spending an hour trapped in Hecker’s nightmare realm, amid the warped organ, static and clanking, is like comprehending the workings of an enormous machine that humanity switched on and now can’t turn off. Being able to step back out into the Manchester night afterwards, surrounded by fleshy, imperfect people, becomes a blessing.