Daniel Avery, Factory Floor + Dopplereffekt

And the wheel turns full circle. Daniel Avery coaxes a noisy entourage into his nest for the first celebration of his exponential rise from fabric resident DJ to fabric resident DJ. In recent memory he was still a blogger under the dubious ‘stopmakingme’ moniker and a humble handyman to the fabric bill. Tonight, he’s probably remembering the way his hand shook as he reached for that play button for the first time here, in the knowledge that what followed would capacitate and comprise his career as a DJ.

Divided Love is his new quarterly series of nights in fabric, and this opening edition oozes quality with Werkdiscs’ acid buff Helena Hauff and the Exit records guys sitting at the lower end of the bill. In fact, Daniel Avery, Dopplereffekt, Machinedrum and Factory Floor are really four headline acts that have been stuffed beneath that iconic brickwork alongside each other to meld genres and sets seamlessly.

The passage that the night takes encompasses Daniel Avery’s style and lays bare some of the reasons for last year’s dramatic rise. Dopplereffekt sport a couple of Jason Voorhees hockey masks and proceed with their metronomic techno concourse, looking and sounding a bit like characters in a mental video game and sinking into a similar vein as that shy Kraftwerk live set up, who feature in Avery’s Boiler Room and share that doctrine of the 4×4 behind one simple, catchy riff. Factory Floor steam along in their industrial bubble and take that one riff to the next level, way into the next level and one step closer to Avery’s driving, acid-flecked techno. It’s pretty much full throttle from then on and that signature cloud of noise settles above Room 1, letting us know who’s behind the decks. Infectious big room techno with the tint of those acts who preceded it forms the apex of the evening’s gentled move into harder repetition.

A perfectly billed night. A year ago Avery enthralled the 200 people at his album launch and marked in stone his position as a key figure in the scene. Now he is the keystone in a run of some of the biggest nights of the year in one of the most prestigious clubs in the world. Now his hands are steady as he underlines that title and slides down the fader on both a milestone night for 2014 and no doubt a landmark for Avery’s career. It’s hard to see him disappearing from the scene any time soon.

– – – – – – – – – –

Words: Henry Johns

Photography: Danny Seaton