Club Review: Aphex Twin @ The Warehouse Project

As a producer so prolific, it’s difficult to predict an Aphex Twin live set. Considering his claims to have recorded hundreds of hours of audio, two hours from Richard James could go anywhere

Jayne Robinson

Date published: 1st Dec 2011

Date: November 18th, 2011

Words: Will Orchard

Photos: Sebastian Matthes (@manox_net)

As a producer so prolific, it’s difficult to predict an Aphex Twin live set. Considering his claims to have recorded hundreds of hours of audio – many of which remain unreleased - covering every division of the electronic spectrum, two hours from Richard James could go anywhere.

Indeed, much of tonight’s Warehouse Project headline set does: as the set develops, a rapidly evolving stream of beat structures and harmonics twist and lurch from a steady foundation of chugging, thick bass, with James gradually filtering in each element, like a patient game of musical tetris. It’s joyously unpredictable, with James driving what would be – in anyone else’s hands – a run-away train.

Half-speed Drum and Bass and fractious Breakbeat trade places over and over, leaving the Store Street contingent leaden-footed and gawping, while hypnotic symbols, words and phrases flash momentarily on the screens behind and before him: "Get thinner and more energetic"; "Show her your mighty man meat and she will worship you". They’re the sort of pithy epithets that become deep and meaningful when stared at for long enough whilst under the influence, like commandments from a trance bible (not unlike the aggressive, atonal ‘Come To Daddy’ and ‘Formula’-esque moments of James’ set which, when thrust square into the faces of a thousand punters, reveal a deeper heart of visceral, if violent, beauty.)

About thirty minutes in, the cold and robotic beats of the set’s introduction give way to a thicker, more tactile sound. From nowhere, house drums bounce over brisk, snaking synths while Latin, carnivalesque percussion - marching snares, shakers – hoot and shimmy between the gaps. Aphex’s sudden rejection of the thin, harsh and metallic sounds that soundtracked his arrival are the

antithesis of the dubstep drop that forms the basis for so many of this season’s other Warehouse Projects; where the likes of Skrillex channel pop sensibilities, building around a bass drop in the first thirty seconds and a typical chorus/verse structure, James’ idea of a drop is one that takes a quarter of his set and spans innumerable styles and structures.

It’s also distinctly more rewarding – James’ drops, seemingly of arbitrary length and placement within a sea of subtle, brittle beats – are so much more pleasing than a solid two hours of explosive, relentless bass, and reward the loyal crowd hanging on his every note.

The Warehouse Project’s final season at Store Street has done a good job of fitting bonafide legends alongside the producers du jour. Tonight, Aphex Twin sits alongside Chic, Carl Cox and Derrick Carter as one of the finest sets from one of the ‘old guard’ in this year’s proceedings.

James’ flawless translation of his often outrageously experimental output for a beat-hungry dancefloor beggars belief at points and the manner in which his fragments and sketches are pinned together by slabs of bass and splintered rhythms, bristling with the energy of something created on the fly, is something that grasps both at the feet and the brain in equal measure.