- This New Year's event in Seattle will definitely go down as one the more peculiar I've gone to over the years.
Nordic Soul opened the night at just after 9 PM with an hour of music that sort of confused me. It was sort of a mash of hip-hop, downtempo, angry bass-heavy breaks and slow 4/4 techno. I think that's what it was, at least—my only guess was he was making sure to open properly for Lusine. I think he may have overthought it, though, as zoned-out and dressed-up people were mostly avoiding the dance floor or sitting upstairs or over in the bar area.
Lusine took over and slowly got a groove going as more people showed up, but it stayed pretty calm even as he gradually brought the tempo up. It's good to remember that holidays bring out people who don't usually do the club circuit, and there was a definite disconnect between Lusine's moody IDM-ish tunes and guys in button-downs slamming shots and wandering after girls who were having trouble turning corners in leather knee-high boots with heels.
Nosaj Thing is an amazing performer and plays beautiful music, but by the time he came on, it seemed as though most people there weren't paying enough attention to notice. Add to that, the sound system wasn't tuned properly for the room, so a lot of Nosaj's bright layered textures and sound washes were lost behind a flat, dull wall of bass. This was also the third time this year I've seen Nosaj at this venue, and those repeat viewings are making me aware of some of the limitations of a live performance of his type. For all of the live motion and editing and cuts and processing, he's playing basically the same clips each show.
What's more, for all of the gear the visual crew brought with them (I think I saw six laptops and at least three MIDI controllers in their corner!), the details of the work they were doing were focused on a few screens behind the stage, with the main lights slowly turning orange and red and little else. Even with Nosaj's talent, the disinterested audience (including several pockets of guys who were standing in circles facing each other and making monkey noises) and weak sound and visuals made the overall performance pretty bland all the way up through midnight.
The countdown to the New Year came and went, and now it was Apparat's turn to play for a filled-out dance floor. He came on, and within minutes, the energy of the room surged into focused party mode. Welcome to 2010 with 140-ish BPM crushing electronic tunes. With a structured balance of straight and broken beats, percussion sweeps and melodic sequences and breakdowns, Apparat made the night completely worth it. For all of the sluggishness preceding his performance, he was a keen reminder of the draw of danceable, powerful, pushy, lovely techno. At one point, a woman with white fuzzy gloves and glow sticks was on the balcony screaming, while Apparat was on—"oh my God, best trance DJ in the world...!!" Hm. Sure, why not?