Oneman: Fabriclive 64
Fabric Records
Things move quickly in DJ Oneman's Fabric mix, given that Steve Bishop (who's featured every Sunday on Rinse FM) packs twenty-four cuts into his sixty-eight-minute live set. Breathless and intense, the mix locks into its future-house groove quickly and ultimately provides a choice overview of the current London Underground scene. It's a raw mix, one the DJ didn't fuss over excessively. In aiming for seamless flow, many mixers camouflage the transitions between cuts; by comparison, Bishop's abrupt change-ups sometimes give the mix a bit of a channel-surfing feel (the move from Mark Pritchard's intro to Fis-T's mighty “Night Hunter” is the first of many such segues). The bass wobble of Fis-T's track might suggest that the mix'll be a banging dubstep set but things branch out dramatically into grime, garage, and even acid in the cuts that follow.
Intended to be representative of a typical Fabric set by Bishop, Fabriclive 64 concentrates heavily on fresh material by the likes of SBTRKT (“2020”), Mosca (“Gold Bricks, I See You”), and Lando Kal (“Further”). The tracks are soulful and funky, whether they're vocal-based (Groove Connektion 2's “Club Lonely,” Ed Case's “Something In Your Eyes”) or classic garage (Burial's “Etched Headplate”). Jump to the halfway mark, and the mix is at a broil, with Nu-Birth's slamming “Anytime,” Joy Orbison's trippy “The Shrew Would Have Cushioned the Blow,” and Boddika's “Soul What VIP” leading the delirious charge. A man of catholic taste, Bishop swings his doors wide open to include Basement Jaxx (a garage-styled Steve Gurley mix of “Red Alert”) and even Ce Ce Peniston (Tuff Jam's stoked rendering of “Somebody Else's Guy”). Hot-wired, experimental tracks by innovative producers such as Pearson Sound and Joy Orbison abound, and the cumulative result is a mix that's equally infectious and seductive.September 2012