- Cable's matte black painted main room, minimal lighting and overall layout are not especially conducive to socialising. It's a place that narrows the focus to what's coming out of the speakers, and suits music in the vein of Blueprint's balls-to-the-floor techno. Label parties, though, often go for a lineup made up of loosely related artists, rather than an imprint's core roster of producers, so you can't always expect the specific sound of the host label to be the most prominent one on the night.
A short time after entering to Mark Broom playing "LFO," it became clear that the Blueprint sound wasn't really what was on the agenda. Judging by their latest event, the residency seems more to be about James Ruskin and (usually) Mark Broom putting on whichever artists they feel like—Surgeon, Luke Slater and Sandwell District have all appeared in the past—while the pair themselves play music that, though generally techno, doesn't adhere particularly to the Blueprint mould, either. Broom's set, for example, included acid and 909s, moving into more pounding techno later on and running across influences and styles from the last 20 years.
This was, admittedly, disappointing, but in its place was a variety that worked well. James Ruskin went all over the place in a hard-edged, experimental way. The intro of Objekt's "CLK Recovery" was given full space to breathe as cheers broke out, before coming in fully and then segueing into glittering, heavy dubstep. A remix of "Pump Up the Jam" also featured, and somehow seemed to fit.
As Peter Van Hoesen cut straight into an ambient intro, significant numbers left the dance floor. His redefine-the-term-stone-faced expression made it apparent that pandering to the audience wasn't particularly high on his priority list. It was up to you to pay attention, the reward being something well crafted and that worked as a whole. An Ableton set was loaded with audio clips that had been pre-produced in his uniquely textured style, and controlling was a Novation Launchpad and two unassuming MIDI controller banks of faders and knobs. Over the hour, he built into something increasingly harder, but within that progression he used the clips as a box of ideas, improvising and dropping parts in and out spontaneously. Syncopated kicks and buried arpeggios were also included.
As we left at the beginning of DVS1's slot, it sounded like he was launching into a set of continually rolling techno, which would probably have packaged the night off quite neatly. Because, although the night was a looser, more lighthearted way of doing things than most Blueprint releases, it still reflected the same influences at work on them.