Night Tales (24/02/24)
I had been to Night Tales twice before: once in late 2020, in a window between lockdowns when Night Moves — aka Jane Fitz and Jade Seatle — did an evening set on the outdoor terrace, and everyone was meant to sit down but of course didn’t and it was great fun; and then again a year later, when Gwenan warmed up for Fantastic Man in the club room and we all got drunk on pornstar martinis and once again it was great fun. I remembered the sound being functional and the crowd being young and rowdy but in a good way. Random, sure, but up for it and into what Gwenan played. I knew I’d enjoy playing there myself, if it ever happened.
Fast forward two and a bit years and this past weekend it was my turn. I’d been invited to play in the club room on a Saturday night, warming up for Prosumer, and there aren’t many other things I’d rather do, DJ-wise, than warm up for Prosumer. I did it at Dimensions 2023 and, on that occasion, rather than heaping pressure on me and setting off nerves (which, I should say, I’m lucky not to suffer much from any more), the knowledge that I was setting the stage for someone I respect so much simply gave me an added feeling of serenity. I’ve learnt a huge amount from seeing Prosumer play over the years, applying it, consciously and subconsciously, to my own DJing, so it's almost as if I’ve trained myself for precisely this scenario. At Dimensions, at least, I thought it worked really well.
So, I could be reasonably confident that anyone making an effort to come out and see Prosumer would respond well to what I would do beforehand. I had some doubt, though, over what proportion of the crowd at Night Tales would be there to see the DJs at all, would know anything about us, or would be patient enough to find out. The venue has a pretty cool programme but there is still an unmistakable Friday-night-after-work vibe about it, probably best symbolised by the aforementioned pornstar martinis. On another lineup, on another day, I might feel some pressure to amp it up a bit and play up to that vibe, by which I mean pack a load of bangers and bang said bangers out from 10pm sharp. It would be the safe option.
But this wasn’t another lineup on another day, it was me and Prosumer, and in my memory I have a crystal clear snapshot of a moment, about an hour into my set, when the room had already filled up quite a bit and there was already the raw material — and quite probably the demand — for a bit of exhilaration, some pump, some bang for your box, whatever you want to call it, and I decided unilaterally — albeit with Prosumer sitting just behind me in the booth providing moral support, whether he knew it or not — to delay the bang just a little bit longer. And not just to delay it, but to consider whether there was a way to deliver it without it being that obvious.
“Joe,” you might say, “a bang is always obvious”. Ok, sure, but maybe what I wanted was for the bang to happen without people being actively aware of it in that split second, without some big rush or drop or blatant change in energy, but rather to notice it a track or two later. Perhaps they would catch themselves dancing harder than they had expected at that juncture, or they’d mentally register a kind of collective lift in the room that their bodies had already picked up on five minutes earlier. Or the effect of whatever alcohol or substances or coke zeros they had been taking would make itself felt more strongly, without being able to point to any particular trigger. And they’d happily think to themselves: “I don’t know how we got here, but I’m glad we did.” That's what I was aiming for.
It's funny catching myself saying all this because one of my pet subjects over the past few years has been the mythical “slap round the face” from a DJ. It goes something like this: I’m out on the town having a good dance to someone I like and even admire. I’m enjoying the music and it feels like we’re about to go somewhere, but then I get stuck in that feeling. We’re constantly about to go somewhere but we never seem to get there. My legs start to get heavy, my mind becomes preoccupied with the sense of inertia, and all I can think is: “I want a slap!” I'm a very patient raver, so for me to arrive at this 'slap' moment indicates that it must really be overdue.
But what if the DJ is operating on the principles I outlined above? What if they do indeed feel the pressure to give a slap but, for whatever reason — experience, stubbornness, the simple luxury of delayed gratification — they decide they don’t want to give it, at least not just yet? Am I then the basic bitch for wanting it and feeling let down when it doesn't arrive on time?
Of course it would be a bit unfair of me or anyone else to expect the DJ to be tuned into exactly the same ‘slap’ curve that I am on during any particular night. And there are so many other factors that come into play: mood, alcohol and drugs, sleep deprivation, crowd, lights, you name it. But I know how good it feels when, as a dancer, you can sense that the DJ is aware of the general contour of the night and is actively engaged in guiding it, drawing on the tension between pushing harder and holding back, but somehow always keeping step — or, even better, staying just one step ahead. When you feel like the DJ is operating in full awareness of where the line lies between lenience and obstinacy, and toying with it a bit before delivering the eventual, and much welcome, chapada — now that's satisfying.
I realise this is all a bit rarefied, but these are more or less the actual thoughts that go through my head while I’m playing or dancing in a club, especially during the warm-up. In the first hour of my set on Saturday, I very much stayed in a slightly moody, reasonably groovy but always light register — from Photonz’s new track ‘Idealize Me’ (which Prosumer instantly pegged as a take on ‘Justify My Love’ — mash-up incoming) to Kerrier District aka Luke Vibert’s ‘Disco Nasty’ and Prosumer’s own joyous remix of ‘Purdie’ by Snacks — and I had some fun flipping back and forth between digital and vinyl and trying to figure out the balance between the two. Moodymann’s ‘Music People’ sounded a bit muddy to me off the LP, which was a shame, but then the 12” of ‘She’s A Nymphomaniac’ cut through pretty well.
The inflection point I mentioned above, an hour and a bit in, must have been when I was playing ‘Love Motion’ by Scrappy, which is pretty pumping but still on the gentle end of the spectrum, especially at a modest 123bpm. I felt like I could have chosen that precise moment to double down and deliver the slap, but I purposefully pulled back with Jamal Moss’s ‘Arras’, a gorgeous, gliding bit of beatdown that has a palate-cleansing silence and piano+vocoder solo near the end. If you want a crowd to stop and just think for a moment, this is the track for you. Sure enough, both me and the dancers took a bit of a breather before I brought in CC:DISCO’s forthcoming remix of Australian band Mildlife’s ‘Musica’. This track is full of anticipation and build, so I saw it as providing reassurance that the energy was indeed still going up. Reese & Santonio’s ‘Structure’, another builder but 35 years old this time, followed, its long, patient intro and crescendoing horn fanfares stoking the energy even more but without releasing it.
Finally, I did a long mix out into ‘The Bounce’, and as this unmitigated banger gradually unfurled I looked up at the crowd, dancing with real energy now and seemingly in synchrony with each other, and I realised, yes, I’d delivered the subtle slap I'd been aiming for. At least, that’s what it felt like to me. Incidentally, it took me until just last week to realise the name 'KenLou' is a portmanteau of 'Kenny' and 'Louie', so I would take everything I have to say about all of this with a pinch of salt.
From that point on I played UKG, NY house, Parris & Eden Samara's ‘Skater’s World’ for the millionth time and Michael Mayer’s ‘Amanda’, because the Kompakt revival is definitely happening. I was particularly pleased with a mix between GIDEÖN’s ‘Nothing Without You’ feat. Mandel Turner and ‘In My House There Will Always Be House’ by DJ DOGGO, from the next release on Welt Discos — not only because the latter title affirmed the house manifesto of the former, but also because DJ DOGGO's track managed to stand up to the frankly intimidating mixdown and mastering job that has been the hallmark of Homo-Centric releases since the beginning.
I finished on a bit of a nu disco tip with the new Boys Shorts tune ‘On The Highline’, which treads close to the line of excess pastiche but avoids it thanks to DJ City’s poignant vocals:
The room was shabby
Upstairs from a pub
With a window to an alley
Narrow and unclean
From downstairs I hear noise
The voices of working men
Card players and tricksters
And those of us who did not belongWe never belong
To me the track is emotionally complex because despite its conventionally driving — even rushy — instrumentation and arrangement, it's far from unambiguously positive. For me, there’s something intensely satisfying about finishing a warm-up set on a rather inconclusive note like this one, and I think I had earned it through the balance of restraint and slap I’d been doling out over the previous two hours.
That's my rather extended take on it all, anyway.
I handed over to Prosumer and proceeded to drink about four more gin and tonics than I had planned, partly due to the adrenaline and partly due to now having to engage with a full club without the convenient task of DJing to distract me. In my patchy memory, Prosumer didn't start his set with any big fanfare or shift in gear, but there was an underlying sense of muscle behind what he was playing, which is a vibe I feel he's really made his own.
My favourite part of his set (that I remember clearly through the gin and tonics) was a stretch in the middle culminating in Sphynx's 'Upstairs', which was a pleasant surprise and sounded absolutely sick. He also played two of my top three 'Classic US house tunes that soundtracked the year' (read my Top 3s of 2023 here), before finishing off with the incredible "for your love" tune he ended his Dimensions set with, washed down with the magnificent Butch A Butch extended mix of 'Borderline'.