Balance008 feat. Desyn Masiello (UK) @ Sugar, Adelaide (19/11/2005)
Sugar was already moving nicely when I arrived around midnight. Mal Chia was on the decks wrapping his set up with Juliet’s ‘Holiday’... and the sultry vocals and skipping house track was pleasing the floor. The man touted as carrying ‘the future sound of House’ DJ Desyn Masiello (UK) was scheduled to appear any minute, and the room was filling up around me. Lachlan Pender stepped up after Mal, bringing a fitting introduction to the international DJ’s work… a short filler set of electro/tech house tunes that were itching to bust into breakbeats. As a founding member of the Adelaide Breaks Collective, we all know Lachlan has a soft spot for the stuff, and he was clearly exercising restraint.
I stepped into the stairwell to take a call from Steph, another ITM reporter who was covering Polish techno artist Echoplex at Crown & Sceptre. She broke me the bad news: Echoplex had missed his flight and was holed up in Singapore, leaving the new night Plastik without its headliner! While I was on the phone, Mal and Desyn’s handsome smile flashed past me on the stairs, and the night’s star was straight to the decks. The cheer as his set began marked my queue to get back inside, and see what Desyn was dropping.
I was prepped for this gig with a couple of listens to Desyn’s latest compilation: Balance008. A double disc set keynoting this ‘future sound,’ the first disc was full of tastefully mixed electro and tech house gems. Synths that celebrate electro with frequently minimal riffs predominate, and simple looped melodies funkify the straighter drum beds. Disc two is a bit more varied, with other musical influences slipping in for spice, and Desyn’s Sugar show held true to the expectations set by this new release.
As Desyn played, the crowd was still flowing in… and things were heating up. The dancefloor was a happy mob of seasoned clubbers, though they were quite reserved with their dancefloor displays. There’s an exception to every rule though, and a little click of young fellas in front of the booth were giving Desyn lots of direct feedback, with the waving, whooping and pointing you might expect from a rave crowd. The synthy tracks punctuated by pauses and funky backbeat riffs went off, and were a standout for me. While I couldn’t confidently say which tracks from Balance featured in his set, I can say that he held true to the sound and feel of the disc. If anything, Desyn stepped it up a level in intensity (and volume) and even had Mal stressing about cooking the PA system!
The PA wasn’t the only thing cooking in Sugar that night… it was damn hot on the dancefloor. After ducking out for some fresh air, I restricted my dancing to the space in front of the most accessible cooling fan. Desyn spiced up his playing (which was mostly from CDs to my surprise) with some soulful vocal tracks, and a few other welcome variations… but the sheer heat on the floor was enough to ensure a high dancefloor turnover. I left Desyn to still increasing numbers in the club after over two hours of dynamite. He was booked to play for four, but at last word he had decided to extend to five. That’s what I call a show! Fabric has a way of getting good mileage out of internationals… Hybrid was another epic delivered at Black Cat only recently.
Desyn is the epitome of the nice-guy international House DJ. Full of smiles and positive energy, he’d obviously had some recovery time after his Brisbane show. Apparently Desyn looked pretty worse for wear when the Adelaide crew collected him from the airport! With pin up good looks, impressive party stamina and the right kind of commitment to his role, Desyn Masiello won over the Sugar crowd effortlessly... and no doubt had the floor shaking long after my departure. If his is truly the future sound of house, then it’s a bright future… at least for funky synth and tech style lovers like me!
