- With a stated mission to revive "the founding ethos of dance music in America," the Apex Tour stormed through Chicago this month with Dixon and Maceo Plex in tow. The organizers of the 10-city tour, San Francisco-based booking agency Liason Artists, and Toronto’s Embrace promote outfit, sought out unconventional venues and local promote crews—in this case the Paradigm Underground crew—to recreate a more mature, DJ-centric experience. at each stop. Polished yet quirky, and large enough to fit the hundreds of revelers willing to pay the steep ticket price, the cavernous Reverie Gallery in the Lacuna Artist Loft Studios was a good choice. The venue's production value was evident from the parking lot, highlighted by the projections on the outer walls and the already present boom that let revelers know they had found their spot for the evening.
By the time I arrived, Dixon had begun and the crowd was up for it, following his hypnotic sounds and self-assured smirks with each step, shake and shimmy. With melodies soaring over smoothly churning bass, Dixon's ride, while uneven at times, was all about juxtaposition, layering old school tracky rhythms over more contemporary sub-bass reverberations. Alternately shuffling to the beat or perching over the mixer, Dixon seemed content to build and hold for Maceo Plex, never peaking higher than the sinister-yet-positive "Come Up From The Darkness (Snowball Remix)" by F. Farfa & David K.
Maceo Plex took over around 4:15 AM with intensity, seemingly playing up the contrast between his hard selections and his own perceived production identity, leading some to question if the music was more "Plex-like" or more "Maetrik-y." Fistpumps emerged through favorites like his own "Superstar" and Jamie Principle's "Bad Boy."
The space and crowd of the venue were a great match. The impeccably tuned and physically impacting (read: teeth-chattering, chest caving) sound by Audio Integration Systems and Void Acoustics were brutally effective, but never too large for the space. Apex succeeded in creating a beautiful event with high production value that still had an underground feel, and bumped off until well past 6 AM.