Club Club feat. James Lavelle @ Chinese Laundry, Sydney (26/01/07)
It seems a bit like the Cave is becoming my second home these days; I can’t even count anymore how many Fridays and Saturdays I’ve spent in that wonderful sandstone box. But if Laundry keeps bringing the same high quality of acts they have thus far, I, and many others, will keep coming back. And last Saturday, the quality acts continued with UNKLE frontman James Lavelle and Bjorn Wilkie playing guest sets.
Unfortunately prior commitments kept me from arriving to catch Matttt’s warmup set, but from all accounts it was a cracker. From second hand reports, he kept the BPMs restrained and the grooves simple, gradually building his set with a great selection of minimal and tech house, teasing punters onto the floor, but not stepping on Lavelle’s musical toes. It’s really great to see Matttt developing into a talented warm up DJ, because there really aren’t enough DJs out there who understand the importance of a well-paced, cleverly arranged warm up set.
James Lavelle then took over the controls and for the first fifteen minutes of his set, stuck his finger up in the air to conventional dance music. Opening with Rare Earth’s Get Ready, Lavelle cooked some heads with an interesting selection of rocky electronica, and just when it looked like the crowd was well and truly unsure if they were in a club or at a concert, James slammed in the first four-to-floor beat of his set and the room erupted. It was an inspired choice of opening indeed: looking around the room during his fifteen minutes of non-dance-music, this reviewer thought “he’s going to lose the crowd soon if he doesn’t drop a friggin’ kick drum”, and no sooner had that thought passed through my mind did he do exactly that, and grab the crowd firmly by the balls in the process.
From here on in the set was a choice selection of crunchy, bassline driven tech house, glitchy minimal, swirly, dark progressive, epic peak-time stompers, and a few musical curveballs. I’ll be honest here and say my tune spotting efforts were less than impressive during his set, as it featured plenty of unreleased gear, but I can tell you it was all quality. However three definite highlights were James Holden’s crowd-pleasing remix of The Sky Was Pink, which was deftly followed by Baby Did A Bad Thing by Chris Isaak (one of the afore-mentioned curveballs), and Burn My Shadow from the latest UNKLE album.
Technically, Lavelle was competent but not mind-blowing. However, he’s never been a DJ that one watches to marvel at their mixing. Instead, from day one he’s been a selector: a man who’s talent lies in bringing together a wide variety of music and keeping everyone in the crowd’s attention, even through tunes that certain individuals may not personally like; and this is exactly what he achieved on Saturday night.
Bjorn Wilkie, Australia’s newest import, was given the difficult task of closing the room after Lavelle, but he relished the opportunity, playing one of the best closing sets I’ve heard in the Cave in a long time. Building his set like few others can, Wilkie carefully crafted a fantastic selection of minimal, tech house and techno into a near-perfect journey of music. Starting low down, deep and gritty with cuts such as Booty Bar by Woody and Inaqui Marin’s Come Down, Bjorn deftly worked his way up through to some driving tech house, including A Black Man In Space from Son Of Raw and the now massive Hunter by Martin Buttrich, before delving back down into subterranean minimal and techno grooves from the likes of Maetrik that rattled the walls, floor and the crowd’s brains.
All in all another great night – it’s becoming the standard, really. Keep the quality coming, Laundry.
ccombe says...
nice review wowky, one of these days we must meet in person :)