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Deliberate Deviations

Broken techno? Sounds like tautology to some, but that's one of the many descriptive terms used in connection with an innovative act coming to The Shelter on Saturday night. Yes, one of West London'...
Last updated: 2015-11-09


Broken techno? Sounds like tautology to some, but that's one of the many descriptive terms used in connection with an innovative act coming to The Shelter on Saturday night. Yes, one of West London's finest alternative music exponents, Tony Nwachukwu will be throwing it down at the intriguingly-named "Off-beat Showcase" party. He's a man looked upon as occupying the very edge of what is known as "dance music" today, and his work strives to avoid categorization with genres being thrown out of the window in a quest for innovation and freshness of sound.

Shanghai resident DJ Alan Shanyinde is the man behind the Off-beat Showcase night, and is on something of a mission to smash musical boundaries and present new music. With this aim in mind, he says Nwachukwu is the ideal man to headline the first night.

"As DJs, we have to listen to hundreds of songs every month and Tony's music isn't just original and fresh, it seems to intentionally collapse the structures which define genres within dance music. It's very much music that plays with interstices of the conventions of dance music."

Nwachukwu, visiting China for the first time, is one of the key figures in Attica Blues; known for their albums "Blueprint" and "Test Don't Test" and remix work for artists such as Macy Gray, U.N.K.L.E, Robert Owens, DJ Cam, DJ Krush, Jazzanova, Spacek, Courtney Pine, and Ben Folds.

He went solo a few years back but has also been working for a number of community projects with the British council to promote music production among young people.

Alan hopes Nwachukwu's challenging sound will demonstrate that the endless possibilities within music are often lost through well-defined labels like Trance, Drum and Bass, Hip-Hop, Techno, etc.

The man from Kirriemuir, Scotland, said, the main idea behind the off beat showcase in general was "to present music that deliberately deviates from marketable music genres."

"Once genres become formulaic and ossified they usually take two routes -- a slow and undignified death or they become canonical and immediately referential. Or sometimes they evolve and oscillate between the two. Late nineties trance and early-eighties disco would be two examples," said Alan.

He's been perhaps influenced in his genre-challenging aim by Nwachukwu himself who runs an interesting night in London. It serves as a platform for experimental producers to play their 'works in progress' to a full crowd on one of the city's best sound systems. So punters get to hear the sounds in the club before they get anywhere near the radio, CD or MP3.

Alan said, "Experimentation helps keep creativity fresh in music, and in my mind it stops dance music becoming too commercial -- as though it just serves a functional role of making people dance or getting girls and boys together."

"I've always been more a listener than a maker of music, and what's always interested me is music that can't quite be pinned down -- that isn't one or the other, or that otherwise offers something different."

"You can expect something very different to the normal Shanghai dance floor fare this Saturday night."

Tony Nwachuwku will be supported by Nat Alexander, Mr Tsang, and Alan Shanyinde at The Shelter. Tickets: 40rmb. Click here to visit Tony Nwachukwu's MySpace page.

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