The funny thing about really minimalist techno is that sometimes it seems like there’s no difference between a terrible piece of music and a really good one. Daniel Bell has always played some stuff that’s superficially similar to the boring records you hear a lot at the moment, but is actually great. (I think lots of DJs, bad and good, would say he’s an influence.)
I was excited to hear that he was coming to the UK to play at Run because I love the ‘Button Down Mind’ mix he did for Tresor. I know it came out in 2000, but I was hoping for something similar, and anyway, I’ve heard a couple of sets from last year that I like too.
Well, the party was in a really small warehouse-type place, which was good. As it turned out, Bell had a couple of amazing moments, but there were way too many flat, minimal-cliché tracks that I could have heard somewhere else. I don’t want to make aggressive, retro demands on Daniel Bell but if he had played like he used to seven years ago, it would have fit in exactly with that kind of stuff but been really refreshing. He also missed out the softcore handbag house that occasionally crops up in his mixes. It’s a shame, because the contrast with extremely stark techno is sort of silly but really satisfying.
Anyway, enough negativity: Bell wasn’t awful, more disappointing, and I’ve just got good things to say from now on. I liked Andy Vaz’s live set – it was understated but easy to get into. I bet a lot of people don’t need the big boxes of knobs they plug into their laptops, but he did lots of tweaking and it seemed to make the music very expressive. I also really enjoyed the sets by Chris, who runs the night, and the person before him. (I’m not sure who it was unfortunately.) Their records were all on the right side of the good/terrible line and they dropped in things like Moodymann (lo-fi Detroit house) and Soundhack (crazy disco cut-ups).
So overall it’s a recommendation: if Daniel Bell had indulged my personal whims, the night would have been great, because everything else about it was spot-on.
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