Francis Inferno Orchestra, London
At this drizzle-masked time of year it seems inexplicable that anyone would ever move from Australia to the UK, but Melbourne’s loss is London’s gain in the case of Griffin James, AKA Francis Inferno Orchestra. To quote your grandma, he’s brought the weather with him too: James trades in sunny Balearica, with florid, jazzy chords swooping through fat boogie drum programming. It isn’t an endless summer, though; there’s a milky haze in the lo-fi production, corroded cymbals flick sand in your eyes and the Philadelphia-style strings are eerily ersatz. He’s joined by another Australian expat in Ben Sun, a graphic designer by trade, who is approaching a decade in the capital but who still has a global ear. His sets, like FIO’s, trade centrally in disco-inflected deep house, but can easily hop into Latin or Afro polyrhythms. Blot out the thought of hail, and you’ll almost feel a warm antipodean breeze.
Dance Tunnel, E8, Sat
BB
Welcome Back To Soup, Manchester
As Manchester’s Soup Kitchen continues to grow in popularity among some of the bigger, more selective names on the international DJ circuit, the venue throws open its doors to welcome in the new year with their roster of residents. There’ll be free entry before midnight, and even a smattering of free booze, which we are promised will be distributed as fairly – and as widely – as possible throughout the evening. On the decks will be Tom Boogizm, who is among Manchester’s finest DJs – an all-vinyl, no nonsense master with the ability to furtively hop between genres and decades with relative ease. Joining him is Annabel Fraser, the mind behind cult night Hupendi Muziki Wangu?, and locally renowned for her open-minded selection and ability to draw over an audience to the booth eager to know what’s spinning, which can range from obscure Italo-disco to funk and techno. Completing the trio is Macca, who has recently and more than ably warmed up for the likes of Prosumer, selecting warm and unexpected house.
Soup Kitchen, Fri
JT
DJ Haus, Brighton
If you’re already heading to raves at places with names like Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, you’re definitely starting 2015 in the right way – especially when DJ Haus is on the decks. With rowdy, pedal-to-the-metal sets that throw house and garage in the mix and sweaty hair in your face, the Rinse FM DJ’s joyful abandon puts him in a zone that’s just as far from lo-fi nerdiness and hardware fetishism as it is from the arena-filling pish that gets passed off as deep house these days. The same attitude dictates the running of his Unknown To The Unknown label, which chucks out new records faster than you can whack them on the platter, cherry-picking artists from across the genre spectrum.
Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, Fri
GT
Morphosis, London
Rabih Beaini is a titan of techno, and not just because of his ursine frame. Since putting out his earliest work in his native Lebanon, he’s probed the psychedelic properties of the style as well as digging through the most unloved of crates. The result: Persian exotica might collide with power electronics, or honeyed disco with chalky house. Cafe Oto gives Beaini a big two-day canvas for his cosmopolitanism, with the first night surveying Middle Eastern music – you can imagine it featuring chaabi, jazz, dabke, and some mid-80s Jordanian post-punk that you’ll vainly search for on Discogs afterwards.
Cafe Oto, E8, Fri
BB
Firecracker Recordings, Edinburgh
When it comes to clubbing, the west coast madhouse of Glasgow often overshadows the Scottish capital. Yet Edinburgh has a dance music pedigree that’s been steadily shaping a new sound. Firecracker Recordings focuses on “oddball” house music, its sound a strung out, jazz-inflected one that flits between party music and self-reflection in a way Scottish music always seems to nail. Fudge Fingas represents the label at this new Sneaky Pete’s party.
Sneaky Pete’s, Fri
LM
