In all honesty, seeing Sepalcure wasn’t the overriding motivation to go to Fabric on this Saturday night. Even before their 1.30am slot in the second room, taken over by Hotflush for the night, there had been some treats. George Fitzgerald was at work laying down his usual melange of house/garage/whatever. The main room was even better; Nina Kraviz providing techno of the highest order, driven by basslines both menacing and groovy, delighting a truly up-for-it crowd.
But Brooklyn’s Praveen Sharma and Travis Stewart provided the highlight of the night with a superb live set, showcasing the talent that has grabbed a lot of attention since first collaborating over a year ago. Much of this acclaim came about as a result of their recently-released LP, and some of the best tracks from it really stood out; “Breezin” was a delight to hear on a big system, while an extended version of lead single “Pencil Pimp” was the cause of much skanking and a few hands in the air.
This was a fine example of how to do an Ableton live set; using the loop capabilities of the software to create fluid, exciting sound. Rather than providing a way for Sepalcure to hide behind their excellent studio work, the set-up allowed them to show off their flair as live performers and understanding of the dancefloor, with the audience finding it easy to enjoy the steady progression and subtle drops of bass. They fittingly ended the set with their album’s final track, “Outside”.
A common criticism of Ableton performers is that they can look wooden and static; not so with these guys, who looked lively and involved throughout (when I congratulated Sharma for the set later on Twitter, he understatedly said “We had a blast!”). And speaking of visual impact, the moving artwork by Sharma’s girlfriend Sougwen was outstanding. Indeed, the biggest disappointment about their set was that such a small screen was used to display this; besides the (admittedly impressive) ketamine geometry seen at many a festival over the past year, the organic drawing behind Sougwen’s work really stood out.
There was still more to come after the gig – label boss Scuba lighting up the Hotflush room with a two-hour set featuring more than its fair share of belters, most notably his own songs “Adrenalin”, “Loss” and “Never”. Techno legend Radio Slave came on at 5am in the main room, but his set, as so often with a late slot, lacked any real energy. A last discovery was the third room, under the control of Berlin’s Klartraum for the night. Late in the night, it looked like Nadja Lind and friends had simply got to the stage of having fun and passing responsibility of the decks to one another, but the kick of the deep techno they were playing was much welcomed and added a bit more variation to a musically excellent night.
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