Andy Stott at The Twisted Pepper, Dublin – 13th April 2013

Howling wind slamming into a tatty Dublin Bus. The sound of the tyres roaring into action, weighed down by the volume of bodies heading in to a Saturday night in the dreary city. It’s all happening around us, and could well be the warm-up act for Resident Advisor’s headliner Andy Stott, tonight at the Twisted Pepper. The mere existence of these sonic, loaded sounds train the ear for the mind-boggling tunnel of sound that’s about to swallow it.

We’d probably go insane if placed in a completely sound-proof atmosphere. But even then, we’re never truly without the sound of ourselves. Whether it’s our inner organs at work or the deafening blink of an eye—we can never really escape it—just discriminate it at different levels. Stott realises this more than your average. We can’t hear our eyelashes flutter now, just like we couldn’t appreciate the ghostly percussion in Hatch the Plan if it wasn’t for the glorious silence that comes before it.

It’s the perfect venue for Stott. Immediately preceded by Barry Redsettaz and Cut Hands, the Manchester-born producer headlines after his critically acclaimed album ‘Luxury Problems’ was released earlier this year. But merely hitting play on the record is not Stott’s style. He crafts the sound in front of us—a sound with no intelligible pattern or method to the madness. But it’s calculated madness, a twisted abyss that doesn’t just happen.

Stott’s mixing coaxes the crowd into a lulling sleep, and just as they’re about to nod off, hits the breaks and skids across 3 lanes—backwards. It’s the weird kid in black hiding in the corner, not the neon rave-monster grinding their jaw on the dance-floor, but still packs the same techno punch.

The likes of We Stay Together and Luxury Problems stretch the sound until it dissolves, patiently building and destroying traditional patterns and rhythms. It’s never clear what exactly you’re supposed to do, as evident by a lot of the on-lookers. Stott creates the kind of atmosphere that wouldn’t suffer from some pharmaceutical enhancement—if not providing that sensation in itself—before having you freak out with paranoia and ending up cowering in a nook among the harsh realities of the smoking area.

Thick bass-lines and schizophrenic twists haunt the blackened room, like the horror movie that is literally playing out aside him. Breathy vocals of Numb bring a seedy ambience, like you should probably get out of there pronto, before the alley-cats come to maul you. Sleepless is a verified killer, stalking the room with an intense techno vibe creating an evil, menacing atmosphere.

But it’s not all fear-for-your-life, spiked disorientation. The jungle rhythms of Up the Box blast through the trees. It’s music that literally gets inside, vibrating around your every nerve. How pretentious—you try be there, or just drill a screw into your head to get the gist. While he appears with a shiny mac, he’s no laptop DJ. The crowd can literally see the graft he’s putting in, and his mixing is flawless. A musical medium—if the outcome is to freak you out and damage all insides, Stott is succeeding. If it’s to make any sense at all, it’s undecided. But for now, all is well, as the punters begin to filter out of the Twisted Pepper—watching their backs a bit more than usual.