Drum'n'bass isn't in rude health at the moment. What seemed like the next dance thing in 1996 - when even Meg Mathews's Sunday Times column gushed about "junglist supremo" Goldie - shuffled back to its niche almost before anyone realised it was just a load of high-velocity juddering. These days, Goldie is trying to shed the ignominy of having been Les Dennis's best friend on Celebrity Big Brother, while d'n'b's other major name, Roni Size, is putting records out on a friend's label.
Size, at least, has the 1997 Mercury prize to his name, which is enough to guarantee a respectable turn out at this midnight show. There's a new CD, Return to V - recorded "without major-label pressure", as he euphemistically puts it - and we're treated to a good dollop of it. A roomful of hyped-up people greet the unfamiliar material, whose breakbeats sound very like those on New Forms, with encouraging squawks. It's a measure of the crowd's esteem that the anodyne thumping that underpins Bump'n'Grind and Shoulder to Shoulder makes people flap their elbows rather than doze off.
Size's onstage responsibilities amount to standing behind his machines at the back, mixing up the jazz-inspired beats that propel the songs to raving climaxes. His head just visible above a computer screen, Size embodies the anti-star values of drum'n'bass. If the genre is to regain ground, though, it needs star faces, and, luckily, his backing band, Reprazent, has two in towering rapper Dynamite and Kiwi female MC Tali.
Together with guest star Beverley Knight, who leads the crew in a powerful stomp through the new single No More, they wrest the show from Size's muso-ish grasp. They freshen up Size's best-known single, Brown Paper Bag, and make Dynamite's introspective Ride sound like a hip-hop Christmas ballad.
Another of Size's diva pals, Holly G, lopes in later with a goose-pimple-inducing Share the Fall. A successful show, but that had more to do with Size's sidekicks than with the man himself.
· At Cardiff University tonight. Box office: 029 2078 1458.
