28th March
Soup Kitchen
7/10
Coming off the back of the extremely successful debut album, Drone Logic, in addition to an excellent collection of remixes, expectations for Daniel Avery’s show at Soup Kitchen were high. With a small but strong supporting lineup including a set from underground techno pioneer, Volte-Face, the show was poised to be a heavyweight set of performances in an intimate atmosphere.
The night began with John Loveless playing some percussion rich, bassy techno, which was perhaps a little heavy for an early slot. Volte-Face followed this with much of the same, but with more variation, incorporating more ambient tracks with rolling synths that appeared to sit a lot better with the mixed crowd that had turned out.
The beginning of Daniel Avery’s set was unclear, as he hovered around the decks for a while before actually appearing to start, giving the night a very casual, house party style feel that was only amplified by the stripped back, basement setting of Soup Kitchen. This seemed appropriate for Avery, as it completely fitted his nonchalant, seemingly indifferent style of performance. When he did visibly get underway, he displayed excellent track selection and really appeared to give the crowd what they wanted and expected from him.
Most of the tracks played in his 2-hour slot were either originals or remixes from his album, some of which he used to test the crowd with, such as Matt Walsh’s remix of ‘Free Floating’. Although this could be construed as the lazy option, the positive response showed that it was obviously what the crowd wanted to hear. The end of the set had a fairly odd feel to it, as whether out of confusion or just poor selection, the last half hour was entirely made up of tracks that were in their own right, incredible closers. The track that actually closed out the night was the KiNK remix of ‘Knowing We’ll Be Here’, arguably the best finisher of the tracks played.
All in all, the gig was an excellent showcase of Daniel Avery’s production abilities, but failed to set my world alight, more as a result of his lack of charisma in an intimate gig, that seemed to necessitate it for the performance to really stand out.
