Lawrence Rice explores the dark delights of the Aus Music showcase.
By the time I arrive at XOYO the snow is a few inches thick and there are icicles forming on my moustache. I’m hoping tonight’s Aus Music line-up will help warm me up.
Label mates Appleblim and Lone join main headliner Will Saul, the co-founder of Aus, a label currently building up a reputation for exploring cutting edge house and techno sounds.
The half empty room Appleblim plays to does not help set the scene. His production can often suggest stark landscapes and vast areas of space, and his subdued layers of sound begin to work their way around the corners of the ceiling. The sparse melodies and machine-like samples relay back and forth through the different speakers, giving the impression of a tour around an abandoned train station, but with the beat never far behind.
It’s normally a trip I am happy to take, but tonight it fails to soar, and only as more people start filing in towards the end do things start to warm up.
While retaining some of Appleblim’s spaced out approach, Lone’s set is more percussive, rave pianos mixing with stuttering synths and much more persistent basslines. Every time the pace seems to drop, Lone ramps it up even harder creating an insistent vibe that bounces round the dance floor. It’s not just a set of good tunes, but feels more like a glimpse of Lone’s own influences, and it’s just a shame it’s quiet enough that I can hear the people behind me chatting.
Will Saul turns the volume up. The percussion rattles off the walls and the basslines ride under a pleasing wash of vocal melodies. The reverb and distance of Appleblim’s opening set is now long gone, and the much punchier house and garage stomp here suggests a lush jungle habitat, rich with synthetic vegetation and beautiful songbirds in the trees. The mirage is effective enough that I almost forget all about the falling snow and grey ice that greets me upon leaving, and I start trying to warm up all over again.
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