French electro auteur Vitalic opens Concorde2’s new club night with a multi-sensory live show replete with bells, whistles and lasers.
Applesauce, the new night aiming to bring together continental and other international stars of disco, house and techno, throws its hand in early with the monstrous booking of Vitalic, as well as acts like fellow Frenchie and industry heavyweight Laurent Garnier. Occupying a musical palate relatively neglected in Brighton dance music circles, Applesauce looks set to smother punters with uber-chic electro house and associated forms of disco glitz.
Vitalic himself presents a fitting, but thrilling segue into this tradition. Explicitly marked with the continental disco brush – retro synth tropes of Ed Banger and beyond ubiquitous in his music – French-Italian descended Pascal Arbez nevertheless builds sky high on a recognisable sonic vocabulary. Tightly sequenced synthesisers ring out unsettling melodic lines, and dynamics ebb and flow to headswimming peaks.
The Vitalic live show incorporates this momentum and transcends its dizzying futurist heights, the hypnotic pulsation of the music’s slow burns mirrored in all-consuming light rigs and opaque sci-fi visuals. Unhampered by a strict coherence to a groove, Vitalic strays well away from European DJ tradition, his live keyboard and drums contributing to the stadium-size scope of his music. The imminent release of his third album Rage Age, mere days from the launch party, will only widen the boundaries of the night’s sonic and atmospheric possibility.
Support from Brisbane’s The Loops Of Fury will see some more straightforward electro house pump up an atmosphere reaching for continental super-club heights, something Applesauce looks ready to achieve it it keeps hold of the pedigree of signings revealed so far.
£12 adv + BF, 23:00-04:00.
For more information visit concorde2.co.uk or facebook.com/ApplesauceBrighton
