Legowelt at The White Hotel
Johnny James, Managing EditorBook now
Legowelt at The White Hotel
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
Pulling vintage gear from the scrap heap and using it to create many different worlds – some real, some imagined – Danny Wolfers music wouldn’t be seen dead near the hype or trends of any given day. And that – at least in part – is why he remains an electronic pin-up, 30 years after he started releasing tunes.
Wolfers played a key part of the early ’90s Dutch West Coast scene, who took inspiration from Detroit and Chicago pioneers but also fantasy films and sci-fi culture. Those threads have never really gone away in his music, and nor has his devotion to hardware, be it old, new or totally knackered. Jamming all day long on music-making toys, he comes out with everything from dense and foresty techno to whizzing electro, deeper electronic music and stuff for which there isn’t a name yet.
Wolfers records under myriad aliases but Legowelt is his most celebrated, with the 2002 charts hit ‘Disco Rout’ first putting him on the map. The ensuing years have seen him forever tweaking his mystical, misty and mystic sounds, averaging an album a year. His latest drop is an EP made with synth-funk artist Shook, titled Technolife Supernature. Influenced by the likes of Wanexa, Eddy Grant, and YMO, it serves up a colourful, fun mix of saturated Italo disco, pop, and electro-funk – drenched in haunting, taunting melodies that stick in your head.
Expect some of this flavour at The White Hotel, but also an ever-roaming sense of sonic investigation, from techno wizardry to freaky house deepness via old school acid.
He’s joined behind the decks by Identified Patient, one of the Netherlands’ most revered underground DJs, whose leftfield mixes are ever full of twists and turns and can potentially include any musical genre, tempo or mood. Kicking off the night will be Manchester’s own Flames Disperse, bringing “dystopia in overdrive” and “rebelling against the future, composition by composition”.