Bodywork, Bristol
Bodywork’s gym-themed nights have proven consistently popular in Bristol, with the promoters dousing venues with inspired decor, exercise-based artwork and more. The UK’s own Bill Brewster will be honouring the night’s first birthday as headliner, with the event taking place in one of the city’s beloved craft beer bars. Flitting between underground house, dubby disco and trip-hop since his DJ beginnings back in the late 80s, Brewster certainly knows how to work a crowd. Originally a chef and co-editor of football magazine When Saturday Comes, it was his move to New York that made him not so much a record collector as a maker, most recently with Alex Tepper under the moniker Hotel Motel. He is also co-author of How To DJ (Properly), so he clearly knows a thing or two. Need something sweet to get you started? Local label Banoffee Pies is in charge of warm-ups, with sets focused on sun-kissed house.
The Crofters Rights, Fri
SM
Numbers: Anthony Naples, Glasgow
When it comes to Glasgow’s Sub Club, the whole thing is falling apart – no, really. The once-glass DJ booth is now plastic, after being bashed to the beat by a collection of sweaty fists one too many times. UK techno DJ Boddika took a chunk of the ceiling home with him recently, too, after a wild i AM party. Sub Club may be bricks and mortar but, nearly 30 years in, it still brings the freaking noise; and freakiness is what makes this week’s Numbers guest, US DJ-producer Anthony Naples, such an exciting headliner. There are his freaky productions: the warping house and techno of his debut LP Body Pill, released this month on another Numbers favourite, Four Tet’s Text label. Then there’s the freaky way that Glasgow makes it all come together: Naples’s track Ill Still was the first release on the city’s stalwart record shop Rubadub’s in-house label in 2013. Now he’s back to headline a show only a stone’s throw away from the ’dub itself. Naples won’t just feel at home; he’ll be welcomed back with open arms.
Sub Club, Fri
LM
Earthly IV & Janus, London
Jam City confused everyone when he launched his new LP at last year’s Unsound festival: instead of high-gloss fractured dance, he announced “this is a song about how internet porn rots your brain” and began crooning to some woozy chillwave. Expect similar wrongfooting as he invites you to “escape crisis via darkness, smoke, haze and sub-100bpm”, along with an as-yet-unnamed fellow Night Slugs guest and Evian Christ, whose trap productions are the sound of lovelorn algorithms. The Janus crew take over room two with an aesthetic that has blown apart Berlin: R&B, cough-syrup Houston anthems, junglism and Birmingham techno gloom all rootkitted into a glop of sound.
Corsica Studios, SE17, Fri
BB
10 Years Of Perc Trax, London
Arriving when techno had lost its grubby, leather-gloved aesthetic and become a core part of mainstream dance, Perc’s damaged, industrial aesthetic swam against the tide. But a decade later – via Blackest Ever Black, Berceuse Heroique, The Trilogy Tapes and others – grot is back in a big way, and Perc’s label feels more vibrant than ever as he hosts this triumphant birthday party. He and Truss will go back-to-back for three hours, while Factory Floor play their seething motorik live (plus there’s a solo set from the band’s Nik Void). New XL star Powell is on hand with insistently anthemic no-wave dance.
Corsica Studios, SE17, Sat
BB
Hustle, Liverpool
French house and techno don DJ Deep got his start after spending night after night watching Laurent Garnier spin at close quarters in Paris’s La Luna. Recognising his natural curiosity and obsessive nature, Garnier made Deep a resident at his infamous Wake Up parties, playing alongside Lil’ Louis, Ron Trent and DJ Pierre. Nowadays, Deep’s brand of uncompromising techno mixed with trippy, jazzier inflections is best associated with Berlin’s thumping club and label Tresor. He’s joined tonight in Liverpool by Kyodai.
The Magnet, Sat
JT
