James Holden DJ Kicks Tour

First published on 14 Jun 2010. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

Review: Last weekend English techno wunderkind James Holden brought his DJ Kicks tour to Chinese Laundry. Playing a four-hour set, Holden seemed squirreled away in ‘The Cave', Laundry's cramped and underground backroom. It may seem strange that the headline act played in one of the smaller areas, but the rest of the line-up did a pretty good job of keeping punters dancing in the bigger rooms. And while the back room was crowded, it was never uncomfortably full.

Throughout the set, the former teenage trance prodigy showcased a lot of the ideas from his recently released DJ Kicks mix CD. He blended a diverse range of songs into a shifting, melodically focused whole with a precision that proved the former bedroom producer has the live chops to back up his ideas.

Holden allowed the crowd to dance without ever approaching cliché - no mean feat considering the huge range of material being mixed. Diverse synth lines were progressively built to a peak, only to be interrupted by a clattering drum breakdown. Then, just when the crowd thought the groove was lost, Holden began to build again, this time to some seriously head-banging main-room melodic techno.

Caribou's off-kilter psychedelic electronica track ‘Sun' was a set highlight. It reverberated around the room before coming to a deranged conclusion as the single repetitious lyric trailed off and the bass drum of the next song slipped in. Other like-minded experimental tracks, many of which were included in Holden's DJ Kicks CD, were also featured.

Towards the end of the night the pace picked up and the energy became driving. The crowd moved not only to the more conventional footstompers and build-ups, but also Holden's abstract glitch breakdowns, as well as some of the more organic tracks popping up on the IDM side of techno at the moment.

By the time the last few songs clattered around the bend, the crowd had been presented a neat slice of comfortably mad techno. Teetering between jumpy and euphoric, Holden's style allows for dancing and chin stroking at the same time. And odd as it sounds, it's ground for a pretty mad party, indeed. Aidan Rolls