- When Mr. Ties spoke to Resident Advisor last year, he reflected on the restrictions that being a well-known DJ could impose on an audience's expectations. A year on, the Italian-born, now Istanbul-based Francesco De Nittis remains far away from being a big name, despite his growing reputation as a DJ. But it's safe to say that most of the people lined up outside Sub Club for his Scottish debut last month knew who he was, and more than a few knew what a set from Mr. Ties would entail.
I wondered if the four hours he was given—a generous slot by Glasgow standards—would see him play with the sort of freedom he's accustomed to at Homopatik, his party in Berlin, where he often plays for much longer. By midnight, a big crowd had surrounded the club's grimy plexiglass booth to grind to his chord-heavy techno, which he mixed with generous dollops of vocal house. This was the bread-and-butter of his set: whether it was the cartoonish acid house of Alden Tyrell's "Touch The Sky" or the more sullen thump of Spencer Parker's "Brotherhood," the music he played was always rich and full-bodied
Whenever De Nittis played a song he really liked—or whenever he just felt like it—he would beat two drumsticks together. His shoulders, draped in a black t-shirt and blue overalls, would bob on either side of his head like a see-saw. As the hours rolled on, both the music and the atmosphere adopted this carefree approach in kind. Sub Club crowds are not generally accustomed to poppy house records, but you wouldn't have known it for the synchronised flailing of limbs when De Nittis played Paul Johnson's "Get Get Down." At every stage, the crowd got him, and he in turn was energised by this.
De Nittis shuffled between records and genres easily and efficiently: gorgeous diva vocals would quickly find themselves swirling amid Robert Hood-style sonic assaults, while a rumbling techno track would slowly dissipate into a giddy disco record. His twists and turns, both musical and physical, were quite simply a delight.