All 📸's by mojojo.jojojo
Say warehouse to anyone that’s dipped a toe into the electronic music scene and each person will likely imagine a similar, dark, abandoned space with impressively high ceilings. Somewhere awesome and brutal, where the music played is equally as abrasive on the senses - hard, dark and fast.
Only Four Tet could transport a crowd from such a space to somewhere full of vibrant colour. His impressive 5 hour DJ stint at the iconic Mancunian venue was a delightful journey through surreal alternative realities that often made you feel like you were on an epic quest in a video game.
To keep an audience engaged for 5 hours is an impressive feat few DJs can do successfully but Four Tet understood the assignment. The whole set was a constant ebb and flow between the beautiful and the darker, heavier, club-appropriate tracks. Yes, the flow became more predictable as time went on, but five hours is a long time to play music without any kind of structure.
Dancers were gently guided through the captivating sonic realities crafted by Four Tet’s productions to a dependable four by four rhythm and the constant tick of a snare drum on every second beat. The magic occurred in the space between these two percussive elements, filled by glittering harmonies made from acoustic sounding instruments and squelchy bits of percussion, such as in "Planet". These moments occurred each time Tet decided to drop a track from some of his earlier albums - an invitation for dancers to get lost in a forest where sunbeams dance on tree trunks that were all sorts of funky colours.
Just when you’d experience the full 360 periphery of one enchanting reality, a delayed clap would tear away the ground from underneath you. You tumble back onto the dancefloor and suddenly you’re grooving to a throbbing kick drum. You stop floating and instead dance a little harder.
Deep in the groove and the peppering of another luscious melody gives you a chance to come up for air. At one point, dancers were treated to a sample from Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love that crept in over the kind of percussive loop characteristic to Tet’s productions.
Another key moment was when Four Tet dropped his massive remix of "Opus" by Eric Prydz- a song that’s been joked about for having a lengthy build-up that takes you nowhere (subverting the trope in mainstream electronic music that assumes drops follow build-ups). The build-up is this wonderful meeting of different synth melodies which blossoms into an emotive moment of suspense. The track successfully captivated the warehouse, raising a forest of arms attached to people trying to record the moment.
Ultimately, Four Tet’s All Day-er was the magical kind of night that left you with that lingering fuzzy feeling after a decent night out. For his fans especially, it was a chance to hear some of his older tracks on an excellent sound system woven into beats designed for dancing.
Special mention also needs to go to the crowd that night. As an artist that’s been making music since before dance music hit the mainstream, it has become an industry that seems to be more concerned with an artists online presence than talent - Tet drew an older crowd that knew how to share a dancefloor.
As always, we will see you at the front!
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