A member of the audience complained during Giant Swan's recent debut at Tresor. They said the bass frequencies didn't sound right, which seemed related to the sound technician's own misgivings about Giant Swan's unusual setup (they bring two of their own bass amps to every show). Another attendee reported a different experience: they'd had a threesome during the set, and it had been amazing.

This wasn't the first time the duo had polarised an audience. The night before in Munich, someone leaned into the sound booth to turn down the volume. Robin Stewart and Harry Wright say they embrace the wide spectrum of responses their music elicits, including from people who point out technical missteps. "The important thing," Wright told me, "is that those people can coexist in the same space with people who don't give a fuck about techno, who just wanna take drugs for the first time."

I saw them play in Birmingham recently at Supersonic, a festival for noise and experimental acts, where they closed at 1 AM. They stood either side of a table laid with synths, drum machines and cans of beer, nodding their heads energetically, dancing and hollering at the crowd. A thumping kick drum was the constant, hitched at various moments with gnarly synth sounds, skittish percussion and reverb-heavy vocals. Stewart pulled his shirt off early on and, at one point, climbed off the stage, beaming a smile at someone who reached their hand out to him.

I met Stewart and Wright earlier that day at a pub near the venue, not far from Birmingham's city centre. They had a brotherly air, bouncing their answers to my questions between them. We were in the ex-industrial neighbourhood of Digbeth, a mish-mash of creative enterprises, derelict warehouses and new builds devised by developers hoping to make a buck. Supersonic took place in a factory that used to produce Bird's Custard.

First bonding over skateboarding and graffiti, Stewart and Wright have known each other since they were 11. They started a band, The Naturals, with two other friends around the same time. They made friends with other Bristol-based artists, like Vessel, who was a bit older than them, and who put them onto labels like Punch Drunk, Tectonic and the Young Echo collective. "They knew all the white labels that we had no idea about," Wright said. "We were into, I dunno…" he pondered. "My Bloody Valentine," Stewart laughed.

It's an example of what they see as the benefit of overlapping music scenes in Bristol, where they grew up. It's a small city, where a heritage of soundsystem culture—owing to the large Afro-Caribbean community in the St. Paul's neighbourhood—mingles with rock, avant-garde art groups and drum & bass. A good example is the annual New Year New Noise shows, organised by their friends at the label Howling Owl, where the bill will often bring together guitar bands, out-there electronics and performance pieces.

Visits to clubs in London gave Stewart and Wright their first transformative experiences of dance music. A key venue was Corsica Studios, where they saw DJs like Oni Ayhun and Regis. "That was like our pilgrimage," Wright said. They were 18 at the time, and starting to make music outside of The Naturals. They had little knowledge of the music they heard, but were grabbed by the energy. "We had no idea," Stewart said. "We just went to the raves, would do a pinger, talk about it for months afterwards, then go to another one."

They started Giant Swan through hanging out in each other's bedrooms, smoking weed and recording sprawling drone tracks. As they got to know each other better outside of the band, they explored different kinds of music, and it was a natural path from making those earlier tracks to the music they produce now. The immersive sound of drones shares similarities with techno—the feeling of locking into a rhythm and getting lost in it.

Stewart and Wright often still feel like they're outsiders to dance music. Putting out records has meant they've discovered the inner workings of releasing a club single, like the expectation to include a DJ-friendly intro, and the buzz of having DJs tell you they've played your music. Batu, who released their fourth 12-inch on his Timedance label, also remembered how they were unfamiliar with some of the patter commonly used in club music. It once led to a comical misunderstanding, when he'd sent them feedback about their tracks. "They replied," he recalled, "and were like, 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'"

The first standalone Giant Swan record came out in 2015 on Howling Owl, which also released their music with The Naturals. It had a lo-fi sound, with submerged bass throbs and distorted strings, attracting comparisons to the Trilogy Tapes duo Rezzett. Celebrate The Last 30 Years Of Human Ego, last year's 12-inch for Timedance, was more polished: the tracks were still cloaked in noise but without the tape-hiss aesthetic, dark but realised with clarity. More people started to pay attention to their music.

The release for Timedance is the first they see as a fully realised record, as opposed to a document of what they do live. They told me they found their creative feet between this release and the Earn EP, released earlier in 2017 on FuckPunk. "We said to each other, 'We're producers, aren't we?'" Stewart said. "We actually had to confirm it to ourselves. We were like, "Oh yeah, that was 'production,'" he said, emphasising the air quotes.

They most recently released the High Waisted EP on Mannequin Records (they have new record dropping on Whities next month), where the paranoid air that often pervades their music is laid on even thicker. On "Architectural Hangover" the tempo is loose and slow-paced, with a bassline that sounds like fattened-up white noise. The title track, hewing closer to the rigid beat of their live show, sounds busy: there's a bunch of different elements that are difficult to discern from one another, punctuated by the pulse of what sounds like an alarm. "Lovely stuff," Mosca wrote as feedback on distributor Rush Hour's site. "Well not lovely obviously, fucking horrible."

Stewart and Wright don't see their music, or the way they approach making it, as influenced by particular artists or sounds. Stewart cites hardcore shows, where he says the energy is more concentrated than at a club, where common interruptions like cigarette breaks, trips to the bar and chatting to your mates aren't so prevalent. "It'll get to this fever pitch," Stewart said, animatedly. "You're watching it and your fist is balled. And you wanna whip off your jacket. You're not mad, you're just like, 'Oh my god, I need to let this out somewhere.'"

It's something they try to emulate in their own shows, embodying a punk attitude that at the same time feels welcoming. Watching them at Supersonic later that evening, in front of a crowd of people you'd not ordinarily expect to find at a techno show, they seemed to strike a connection with the audience. Many in the enthusiastic front row were blokes in their 40s, looking faintly unsure of themselves, haphazardly dancing with pints of lager. They seemed to welcome the strange sounds that were thrown at them, new percussive elements sounding like shards of glass being smashed on the floor.

"Our big thing is inclusivity and inclusion," Stewart said. "And fun in the rave. This is why we started doing it: because it's fun." Batu agreed, seeing the intensity of their shows in a similar light. "I don't think they're trying to alienate anyone," he said. "In a subtle way, they're with the audience. They want them on their side."

The duo's relationship to club music can seem contradictory. On the one hand, they're keen to be recognised for what they do. Speaking about how some of the crowd at their Tresor show had initially seemed wary of them, Stewart said, "If you can enter into the canon in that way, and not have compromised anything, that's something we're really proud of." But when I later asked them about how they saw their music in relation to the lineage of techno, or club culture more broadly, they said it's something they try not to consider.

"I don't think you should just constantly go forward with fingers in your ears," Wright said. "But I think, actually, you've got to have a bit of that to try and make new stuff." They point to the reverence in some circles for the likes of Jeff Mills, saying this attitude can nurture a sense of stasis, restricting the horizons of what artists create. Their mindset also points to a trade-off that can trouble the music-making process: between striving to do something worthwhile and not getting bogged down in trying to achieve perfection.

Stewart spoke about the duo's close relationship, saying that working in a pair has helped them not be too precious about finishing things—and to enjoy the process of doing it. "When the other person's done something, we're like, 'You're my best mate. I love you,'" he said. Watching them play, it was easy to see what he meant. There's an easy, playful tone to what they do.

There are conflicting thought processes that can propel the act of creating music. Stewart underscored how he sees the experience of making music together as the most important aspect of what they do, rather than the final product. "It's so much easier to enjoy that process if you have that attitude," he said, "rather than being like, 'We've got to make it like this. It's got to be perfect.'"

But then he explained how it's that mindset which helps them produce tracks they feel proud of. "It stops us from writing bait techno," he said. "Which is honestly the most important thing in my mind a lot of the time: don't write shit dark techno." It's a relatable paradox. Only by not thinking about trying to do something that's original or worthwhile will you make something that's original or worthwhile.

It makes sense that Giant Swan crowds include a wide range of people, from nerdy, record collector types to hedonistic partygoers. They take pride in attracting both microscopic critiques as well as enthusiastic praise. Speaking about the Tresor night, Wright said, "It's a good example of those people coexisting, and doing something for them—whether it's disappointing them with the hertz rate or a better orgasm with their friends."

Giant Swan in three tracks

"The Rest Of His Voice" [Mannequin Records, 2018]

Bleeps and percussion flesh out this track's raw, head banging bounce.

"IFTLOYL" [Timedance, 2017]

The duo lock shuddering drums, muted speech and ricochets of sound into a punishing groove.

"Bring Back Fives" [Howling Owl Records, 2015]

Drones, crunchy pedals and psych-tinged licks collide for a blurry wall of sound.

Catch Giant Swan on the RA Stage at No Bounds Festival 2018.