Review: Batu: A long strange dream, Strange Brew – ‘both transcendent and heady’

Cycling towards Strange Brew, there was certainly the atmosphere of a big one. All the bike racks within a 500 metre radius were overflowing with nimble looking road bikes, and the front of the venue was overrun with beanie-clad twenty somethings. The air smelt of cigarette smoke and watermelon elf bars. It was going to be a good night.

After locking my bike to a tree just around the corner, my friends and I paced towards the entrance. The queue was long, everyone was buzzing to get moving to the no doubt classy sounds of Batu, founder of Bristol electronic label Timedance, one of the larger successes in UK underground music over the last decade. Eventually, we made it in.

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Batu was currently playing around the 130bpm mark. Being known as a DJ who blends genres as quickly and easily as a painter mixes paints, I knew that what was currently bouncing UK Funky was much slower, crawling grooves only moments ago.

The evening progressed, and as the size of the crowd began to increase, so did the tempo. 140, 150, 160. before any of us even realised, we were bouncing to footwork and speedy, fist-pumping electro. Then came the drums.

There’s the old trope that every DJ in Bristol is a drum and bass DJ, and due to the wide-reaching, flexible tastes of Batu it was only a matter of time until the tracks got fast enough that the rollers, well, rolled in. I just didn’t expect it to happen at 11:30. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t your usual student night brand of DnB, it was tasteful stuff – minimal, stripped back techy rollers with plenty of room to breathe.

Whilst everyone had their gun fingers well and truly in the air, there was a shared sense in the room of “where do we go from here?” The night had 3 hours to go, and although the night wasn’t branded as drum and bass, the fact remained that it’s far easier to increase the tempo than it is to decrease it, without murdering the energy, at least.

I couldn’t tell you what happened. All I know is that I went out for the most poorly timed cigarette of my life, as when I returned to the room, Batu was laying down steady, smoggy techno – both transcendent and heady. Time to do it all over again.

Except this time, he was much slower with his tempo increases. He spent the final couple of hours labouring over 20bpm, dragging it upwards like a sack of bricks up a hill. With some of the most eclectic taste around, it was a marvel seeing what he dug out of his crate (or USB). In the end, more UK Funky-esque rhythms – seemingly the flavour of the month currently – before ending it at lights on with a grime/drill edit of gypsy woman. Flavour.

Main Photo: Rupert Taylor

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