It was a couple years ago that Demdike Stare last played in town, and for the first 15 minutes of their set at Public Works, they faced an onslaught of heckling from an audience critic, very loud and very drunk.
“You suuuuuuuccccccckkkk!” yelled the girl, repeatedly. “You’re the worst DJs in the world!”
I had to laugh. Surely, in the midst of the Great EDM Explosion of 2012, she was expecting something with more commercial accessibility. (This was the year you couldn’t escape David Guetta if you tried.) But when people talk about the recent noiseification of dance music, or the danceification of noise music, they’re talking about ahead-of-the-curve groups like Demdike Stare.
Founded by Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker in grey, rainy Manchester, the duo immediately brought that city’s historic darker side to their rhythmic productions on early EPs. By 2012’s Elemental, Canty and Whittaker’s vision included straight-up noise with barely any beats at all. For cerebral music lovers, the variety was bliss; for tipsy clubgoers wanting something to grind to, not so much.
