A four day long weekend, and what better way to start it with some dark techno dancefloor action courtesy of Alex Smoke at Minimal Fuss.

I hadn’t heard any recent material from Smoke, in fact the most recent was his Paradolia album which I thoroughly enjoyed. Buoyed by positive reviews from a recent visit to Sydney when he played at Chinese Laundry, I was certainly keen to check him out.

I quite enjoyed his set, even if at first it felt a little stop start. A different sound to Paradolia - and I’m not going to use that much overused term “minimal”, he chugged along on his techno groove using Ableton Live and Logic Pro, a dancefloor most appreciative to his sounds.

Declan and Ben Korbel played in a tag-team style prior to Smoke. Perhaps Declan is going deaf as he absolutely murdered the mid and high ranges when was on with Korbel bringing them back to an acceptable level. Korbel’s sound has changed to contain much more techno these days, yet, it still contains the floaty remnants of his progressive headspace. Whilst not my bag, it was far from offensive.

Hats of to the Minimal Fuss crew for a solid party, and no, I didn’t make the dawn service.

View the photo set.