- Cup Eve saw the doyen of progressive, John Digweed mark his Melbourne return with just under 5 hours at QBH, a super club in every sense of the definition.
It was the first time to QBH for almost two years for this me; it was also the first time to see Digweed perform as a DJ in any capacity (I'm not a veteran of old Welcomes or old Chevron sets for that matter). The truth is I didn't grow up listening to Digweed back in his Renaissance CD days; Northern Exposures aren't the seminal CDs to me as they are to some, and with all this in mind I definitely didn't go expecting anything from Digweed, as far as musical genres are concerned. What I was hoping for was some kind of deep journey, a true indication of his famed track selection, and to just have some plain old fun.
Without doubt for me it was in the first hour or so that he truly shone. After Gavin Keitel had warmed up the already massive crowd with some truly great techno-fused prog Digweed stood up and threw down basically great club tunes. It was kinda dark, had some definitely techno sounds, a constant driving bass-line, but perhaps most importantly it grooved at a tempo that just invoked booty-shaking. He kept the crowd hanging off every beat, building up and storming back in, and generally causing mayhem.
For the next couple of hours he turned to a more barn-storming prog sound, basically beating the crowd into submission with massive overwhelming sounds just constantly driving along with a thunderous beat. It was pretty full on and a bit hard to appreciate, it was a choice of being down amongst the dancing throngs, with hardly a ounce of space, or up on the balconies trying to catch your breath, which left the sound muffled and a bit indecipherable.
Toward the later stages of his set he continued to pound out tune after tune, a smattering of deeper progressive sounds were followed by more relentless beats, his chosen theme for the night.
Digweed seemed content to storm through the night with a humungous sound, thumping the lines of heavy progressive, straying only for an instant along the way. It was strange in that sense, there wasn't a great range of variety musically, and with the sound system geared towards an extremely heavy bass-end it was a case of thump, thump, thump the whole night.
I definitely wouldn't say I was left disappointed from his efforts. It was a hell of a lot of fun, and it really was at times breathtaking to see the control he had over the room and the ability to build his set to some awesome crescendos. I do however get the feeling that there was a side of Digweed that we didn't get to see. The reality of the situation was that there was a couple of thousand people in a massive club dancing hard, but without a doubt the stylistic approach would have differed if we'd taken a zero off of that total. I can only hope that there isn't another 4 year wait till he comes back to Melbourne, and on his return that there is maybe a show that really displays the intricacies of his mixing skills and variety of tracks at his disposal.