There might be a slowdown in corporate club land, but underground dance music is still thriving. Indeed, this year’s inaugural DEAF – Dublin Electronic Arts Festival – proved that the Irish capital is becoming an increasingly important focal point for electronic music.

Masterminded by Eammon Doyle and Rob Rowland from D1 Records and Karen Walshe, DEAF’s flagship 1,200 capacity event at the Storehouse sold out a week in advance, not bad going for a predominantly Irish line up taking place on the same weekend that Carl Cox is in town.

Apart from a few minor teething problems – lengthy queues at the bar and inscrutable behaviour by security, The Storehouse makes for an impressive venue, its steel girders and expansive glass architecture providing the perfect location for the event’s futurist bent.

Spread over three floors, the top Gravity Bar space is occupied by the ever popular Hustle night, with Billy Scurry and Mark Dixon as well as live act Soulsaver delivering the soulful house sound the club is synonymous with.

On level five, local junglists Bassbin host DEAF’s most euphoric space, with a full house cheering on local DJs Con and Naphta before Paradox’s live set and Dego from 4 Hero tops the bill. Breaks of a more experimental nature emanate from the Front End Synthetics stage, with U-Ziq’s Mike Paradinas following local act Ambulance with an eardrum ripping gabba meets drill’n’bass selection, while Firehouse Skank offer a dub reggae refuge from the teeth rattling intensity.

On level two, the tiny Vibrator space plays host to all kinds of electronic blips, bleeps and fizzes with local chin strokers Hard Sleeper and Karl Him battling it out with America’s Colophone. On the same level, the techno and electro space, which occupies the biggest room, shows Dublin’s underground scene is in good health.

Granted, headline act Aux 88 from Detroit make for an amusing spectacle in their camp military gear and have to be praised for their Kraftwerk medley and rendition of their classic ‘My Aux Mind’. However, the real highlights include the warm up deep and techy live performances from Americhord and Derek Carr and local heroes Decal, whose frenetic breaks set elicits one of the night’s biggest crowd responses. Barcelona might have Sonar, but, on the strength of its debut outing, Dublin’s DEAF is also set to become an essential date in the global electronic diary.