Grimes, Manchester HMV Ritz, August 30th 2012 7/10

The Guardian newspaper said of Grimes: ‘By sounding a little like everything you've ever heard, the whole sounds like nothing you've ever heard’. The 24 year old from Vancouver has talked about the influence of Napster which came along with she was 11: "I went through my adolescence having this revelatory experience – I can have any music I want and I can get it immediately. For me and for a lot of people I know, there's this musical eclecticism that happened." As a result, her music has an amazingly wide array of influences ranging from industrial, electronic, pop, hip hop, R&B, noise rock and even Hildengard von Bingen, a visionary proto-feminist from 12th century Germany.

We live in a golden age of incredibly democratic and wide ranging access to music, a situation unique in history. Beethoven’s influences were primarily the Viennese classicists that came before him such as Mozart and Haydn. He was revolutionary in his music in developing the formal classical style into romanticism, where feelings and ideas moulded the sounds he made. Yet, he still worked with existing forms (such as the symphony) and orchestra. It’s beyond my comprehension to imagine how he might have developed if he had access contemporary technology. Yet, since Grimes is also a musical genius, she gives some pointers as to what might have transpired.

Claire Boucher became involved in the underground electronic music scene whilst at University in Montreal, spending evenings in the Lab Synthese, an experimental music performance space in an old textile factory. A friend taught her how to use Garage Band, and she became so obsessed with composition that she was thrown off her course for failing to attend classes. She studied ballet for 11 years, and absorbed the western classical music heritage. At the same time, she listened to and admired performers such as How to Dress Well, Swans, Nine Inch Nails and the Cocteau Twins. This culminated in a moment of realisation: ‘One day I was listening to music and it suddenly made sense to me how it was constructed'. Grimes' third album, Visions, released by 4AD this spring is incredibly imaginative: it’s clear that her mastery of the theory of composition has freed her to experiment. Her mastery of the rules of music has allowed her to stretch and manipulate them to breaking point.

Gimes is a famously eccentric character, a slight, edgy presence when she wanders nonchalantly onto the stage. Like her idol Hildegard, she uses fasting and sleep deprivation (also drugs) to achieve a state of higher consciousness before composing. The music can be described as heavy electro pop, predominantly based on synths and drums It combines earth shattering bass with a French delicacy (Grimes is of Québécois descent). It’s a mistake to assume the beat takes centre stage: the emotional centre is Grimes’ remarkable voice, an other worldly falsetto, often looped. She’s a minimalist, stretching and flickering tunes in and out of focus, the ethereal vocals sometimes layered like renaissance polyphony. The effect can be dark and melancholy in the manner of Zola Jesus, but there’s a spiritual light at its core, which is incredibly uplifting and inspiring.

This was my second time seeing Grimes in a week, having enjoyed her amazing Reading Festival performance. This Manchester gig had been upgraded to a larger venue, yet the atmosphere didn’t match that in the Dance Tent a few days earlier.  Performance is a living thing, and thus unpredictable: the audience last night didn’t engage with Grimes in the way the frenzied younger one had done previously. The sound, normally excellent in this venue, had the vocals balanced too far back, whilst Grimes herself seemed more earthbound. By the time she came on stage, I’d been standing on the front barrier for three hours, and endured two support bands who didn’t inspire me at all, so perhaps I was in a less receptive frame of mind too.

Yet you should take a risk and see Grimes live: if the stars are aligned correctly, as in Reading, you will have a magical experience which will fuel your own creativity for days. Even last night, Oblivion and Vowels = space and time felt like a heavenly synthesis of the last 800 years of musical culture. The addition of two dancers who moved like wild, mythical creatures in the dim light added to the sense of mystery, whilst the whimsical look in Grimes' eyes and flashes of mischievous smiles epitomised a sense of freedom. Her recent self directed video for Genesis gives window into her unique thinking: you should take a risk and embrace that which is challenging and different.