Will Saul // Audio

Stompaphunk presents Will Saul and Lil Dan@ Audio 14th July 2006

My night began in a cultured sort of way, starting with a private viewing at the Permanent Gallery, where we were surrounded by enormous pink and blue polystyrene sculptures, talking with video artists and smoking in a dingy courtyard behind the gallery. I went down with my housemates Orion and Nadege, the brains behind performance art collective protoPLAY and their co-collaborators, Harry and Jules. We went for drinks after that at the Lion and Lobster, where a 50s style jive band were playing inside and bar staff were dressed in rockabilly scarves and flouncy skirts. The men too. I ran into a few friends while there by chance – who knew the L&L was such a mecca? A good watering hole, although time slipped by too quickly, what with Harry inserting a swizzle stick up his sinuses for our amusement and Jules nursing his broken arm. We snuck out with my pint of Magners in tow and went to the shops to stock up for our final destination, Audio.

As we jumped in a taxi at 12.30, I got a phone call from the rather drunk B, a charismatic drum n bass dj from Dublin. “I ran into your mate who runs the site. He bet me a pound I wouldn’t go to Audio tonight! Tell ‘em he owes me that pound – I’m coming!”

There was a marginal queue to get in, but thankfully I used the ever-efficient Brighton Fusion queue jump system to see us swiftly in. Inside, there was a moderate crowd getting down to Dan Hill aka Lil Dan, the warm up DJ for Will Saul. With his turquoise t-shirt and baseball cap worn cocked in an angle, Dan looked like one of the cool Puerto Rican kids that hold up the style front in New York. It’s all hiphop yo – tho his set was not. At one o’clock, I saw Will go up in the DJ booth studying the mixer and he soon took over.

Will’s set was more on the minimal tip, playing tunes that were in the same vein as “Digital Watch” and “Chameleon”, combining disco basslines, electro synths and chunky house beats. Overall, he achieved an insistent, driving set of tunes, which still had an ethereal quality somehow. His two-hour set built layers of sound and was something I enjoyed listening to as well as dancing to. Will is a DJ with intense concentration. Not so fresh-faced as his picture would have you believe, he sported a beard and his chin-length brown hair was tucked behind his ears, closely working with the music. On the night, he swapped between CD mixers and the decks and was clearly into the cool edgy basslines he was choosing for the dancefloor. There was a lot of music I’d never heard before so I can’t give you a list of what he played, but the crowd did and there was a lot of shout outs and whistles for every other tune he played.

Will is classified as a breakbeat DJ, but as was evident with tonight’s set and everything written about him in the industry, he is a purveyor of beats – broken, dirty, chopped, pounded into the pavement with a heel, and brought back from the lowest depths of what’s fundamental about music into something new and incredible. As with his tunes, his set is not reductive, but instead echoes a more complex system of listening to music.

On the night, Will was accompanied by Fin Greenall aka Fink, the Ninja Tune artist. The guys have recently paired up to create Aus Music, the sister record label to Will’s Simple Records. Whereas Simple Records focuses on house, techno and electro, including artists like Berlin monster Phonique (oh, so hot it hurts), breaks act Precision Cuts, and the Austrian duo Walkner.Hintenaus, Aus Music promotes music that explores the experimental side of the electronic music genre.

At 3 o’clock, Dan resumed the decks, seeing the end of the night with a random mix of party tunes and bouncing around – it was his birthday that night, so can’t blame him really. The “lights are on and you people need to leave” song was a crazy samba-tinged house tune, which was a good laugh. My friends at this point were properly munted, dancing like insane people, and joined by Grant and some other random people, we headed down to the seafront for more fun. Someone handed us these 3am passes, to which we were like “oh wow, aren’t we lucky?” As it happens, they were “passes” to Funky Buddha (great) and they don’t even get you in for free. What is the point? Half price entry (£4) and when the bouncers there started getting sniffy about the guys wearing sandals, we cut our losses. Grim. We somehow managed to get into the Honey Club and it was a real contrast from the start of the night. The music was predominantly house, electro, and breaks but by contrast it felt sterilised. Still, not a bad place to end up and we had a good dance, but the airlessness of the room and the ever present watch of the bouncers made me long to run down to the beach and sit by the sea instead. Which I did.

6 o’clock in the morning, the sun coming up, the avid metal detectors loyally out in full force and it was the start of a warm summer day. My housemates didn’t get home until 1pm and when I found them, they were flayed across the living room sofa unable to speak. For once, I was glad it wasn’t me.

Will Saul plays at Stompaphunk on a bi-monthly basis.

For all you myspace whores: http://www.myspace.com/simplerecordsuk

Tip: Check out Mike Monday’s “Bhalobashi”. If my memory serves me right, Will played it out at Audio and it’s hot!

Audio
http://www.audiobrighton.com

10 Marine Parade
Brighton
East Sussex
Tel: 01273-624343

info@audiobrighton.com

Words: Amy the Film Maker