The Vaults, Cardiff Bay
Sat 29 Apr
This looks like the best night in the Vaults for some time, with three rooms of house, disco and funk to choose from – but I’m pretty sure temperance will be in short supply at an underground club in Tiger Bay. Chicago’s house hero and man of the people, Derrick Carter, is back after a set at Tramshed last year. He’s known for a pumping, electrifying style of house music that moves in the same waters as Green Velvet aka Cajmere – whose label, Cajual, Carter once worked for. Some of his early tracks were extraordinary: check out his record Dreaming in collaboration with the aforementioned Cajmere, a hypnotic, narcotic, and probably perfect rhythm.
Flash forward to the present day, and while still producing and remixing, Carter’s still held in high esteem for his effectiveness at controlling dancefloors. He has a powerful ability to control and maintain a high level of energy in a subtle way, with a very particular and hard-to-imitate selection – he often mixes fast, with a certain feel to the bass sections of his selections that induces a kind of muscle tension that heightens the impulse to movement. If you catch him on a good night and a good soundsystem, that is. The Vaults should be perfect.
There’s another legend on this bill too though, heading up the Disco Dungeon – by the way, I’m unsure whether this really is a place of punitive confinement, perhaps for those found to have broken the Code Of The Club? Anyway, NYC’s John Morales has been doing disco longer than most people, and has a good 15 years on even Carter’s career. He’s even said to be one of the first people to create an ‘extended remix’, cutting and splicing his disco tapes to create dancefloor-crushing medleys. He had a big influence on the Bronx’s cutting-edge scene as he began releasing his reel-to-reel edits, medleys and remixes via the Sunshine Sound, a studio where DJs could bring their own tapes and cut records while they waited, ready for the club.
Tickets: £20/£15. Info: www.vaultspresents.com