- It would be easy to spin 500 words about Daniel Wang's outfit alone, but there's more to this story than hot pants. So much more. The venue for starters: Charlie's is a red and gold coloured Chinese karaoke bar. It has carpets laid around the outside of an optically confusing dance floor, a freakishly small DJ booth tucked tightly into a corner and low sporadically placed podiums. The staff peers out from behind the bar with strange looks in their eyes at a strange collection of people.
The crowd is relatively young and perhaps a little bit too shiny for my normal tastes. Everyone is however enjoying themselves and this helps to create a lively atmosphere worthy of any decent Friday night shindig. My last visit to Naive Melody was almost two years ago and it remains one the haziest and most peculiar nights of my life. My behaviour that evening was a far cry from acceptable. Fortunately this time I kept things under control, making it easier for me to recall just how much fun I had.
Photo credit: Kris Adams
It was one of the residents, Andro, who warmed up. He plays for three very different nights in Manchester—The Warehouse Project, Function Room and Naive Melody—but on this evening he expertly twisted through a diverse selection of low reverberating basslines, hypnotic swaying melodies and soulful house. It's always with envious eyes and twitching feet that I watch him bouncing behind the decks. He is part of a core selection of excellent local technicians playing around the city at the moment, easy to see and even easier to enjoy.
In my opinion one of the hardest things for a DJ to get right is disco. It has a rotten reputation. I've only been lucky enough to see a few people pull it off: Ashley Beedle, James Holroyd and Todd Terje to name them all. But even those true believers tend to keep to more a house-orientated mood. Daniel Wang, on the other hand, straps himself into a disco-stripped juggernaut and slaughters his way through 40 years worth of music. His technical ability is unmatchable, yet his talent for choosing the next record is even more inspiring. Think what you will, but one of the highlights of the evening was strutting along at full pelt to "Lucky Star" by Madonna before diving headfirst into unknown disco oddities that would have likes of Larry Levan cheering from his grave.