Nicolas Jaar at Fabric

Mid-week gigs at Fabric seem a no brainer in retrospect, taking advantage of the club’s skeleton-shaking system and central location, but the buzz around Nicolas Jaar’s appearance over two nights belies the fact that this is only the second in London Electronic’s takeover of the iconic venue.

Taking place in the darkened main room, promoter Derren Smart’s contacts extend back to his days at T-Bar which might be why we find Wolf & Lamb’s Vez and Soul Clap’s Charlie providing between act entertainment on a Wednesday night, dropping Funkadelic and Outkast after the dubby, stripped-back atmospherics of Valentin Stip, the 19 year-old Parisian/Canadian protégée signed to Nico’s Clown & Sunset label who’s acting as live warm-up tonight.

Having last caught Nico live at the T-Bar closing, back then a solo act involving laptop, keyboard and mic, tonight the much-hyped US/Chilean artist has expanded to a quartet including drums and live sax. Standing amongst pillars of light spotlighting the front rows, and performing tracks off Nico’s debut album ‘Space Is Only Noise’, plus four new additions as an encore, it’s a novel spectacle, more akin to an abstract jazz performance than something in-line with the venue’s normal Chicago/Detroit/Berlin stylings.

Given the packed nature of round one however, and the fact that the second night is sold out, you suspect that it’s part of a new age in electronic music that is only just taking hold.