Andy Stott played Public Records

Andy Stott turned Public Records into a Boiler Room-esque set, turning a Sunday night into a brutalist dance party.

Entering the Sound Room of Public Records on Sunday night involved walking down the venue' long hallway from the atrium, past the coat check and bathrooms and into a cloud of dense fog with minimal lighting. The nearly pitch black room was only illuminated by a pulsing strobe that was positioned behind Andy Stott's laptop and mixing board and the occasional light that would hit the dance floor. As the first notes hit, the speakers bellowed and the room warped as the bass cranked to an extreme volume, so much so that I could feel my clothes vibrating for the entirety of his set. This was a booming and moving show, the crowd lost in a haze, but kept grooving from such a ferocious beat. Stott's dub-techno flooded the room, these warping bass notes blowing apart at a throbbing volume that it nearly felt like sensory overload. These massive sounding songs were overpowering and as I stood directly between Stott and one of the venue's towering speakers, it felt as if the music was permeating my body and injecting its rhythm directly into my blood. Slowly building these structures and weaving in ghostly vocals into the fabric of each track, the clanging industrial elements scraping right up against the rubbery bass giving everyone enough momentum to keep a groove alive while trying to not submit to the extremes at hand. An endurance test as much as a rave, Stott pushed the envelop as much as possible, taking big stabbing jolts of banging house and washing it over with streaks of ambient waves, briefly cooling things down for moments before blasting away again with more of his clamoring sonic textures. Sculpting his songs from raw formations and shaping them into avant-garde dance numbers was entrancing to experience and falling under the spell of his production led to such an extraordinary feeling that it was foolish to not let go and just trust that his beats would find you in just the right moments and transport you into a euphoric state at any given moment. After teasing an end, Stott came back to the stage, re-opened his computer and made a joke about just sending a few emails before finishing the night. His final portion of the night sent the BPMs into hyperdrive as he flirted with gabber beats as things really built up to head spinning epics. The intensity reached its climax and the final moments were surely the heaviest of the night, his lightspeed processing making it feel like we were grinding away through total industrial warfare. As much a physical experience as it was an auditory one, Andy Stott brought the goods and put on a clinic of how to turn brutalist art into something that can still inspire and and elate joy.