Fairmont Plays Killer Live Set at Cielo

Fairmont Plays Killer Live Set at Cielo

2 July, 2008 | 6.31AM

• Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog
• Written by: Amanda Connon-Unda

Around six years ago Jake Fairley aka Fairmont was part of the rock outfit, ‘Uncut’ in Toronto.

Surprisingly, and quite uniquely apart from many of his indie rock contemporaries, he was concurrently working on his own solo electronic music project.

Jake was in his home studio with drum machines and analogue gear, making beats of his own kind—an amazing hybrid somewhere between rock and techno.

His shoegazer-style vocals would at the time blend well with electronic drum machine and synthesizer sounds, while his groundbreaking sound would impress Toronto’s techno elite.

During the late ‘90s and early 2000s Jake was able to make friends with other Toronto techno producers before many of them—such as Mike Shannon, Jeff Milligan, Pan/Tone, Jeremy P. Caulfield, Adam Marhsall, and Fairley, himself—eventually moved to Berlin. 

Fast forward to Friday night in New York City at Cielo nightclub—Fairmont is playing the mainstream club circuit and he performs a wonderful but too-short set. 

Fairmont opened his set with one of his own hits called ‘Fade and Saturate’ from his delightful 2007 album, ‘Coloured in Memory’.

Fairmont also played ‘I Need Medicine’ with his own live and dark vocals, and his own 2005 minimal techno recognizable hit, ‘Gazebo’.

His set was danceable and melodic, hypnotic and well done.

He’s been touring the world from his base in Berlin for a while, and this summer he’s playing plenty of North American dates and visiting his hometown of Toronto.

As a wonderful surrounding to Fairmont’s live set, Cielo boasted an amazing sound system and plenty of great psychedelic lights in every shade of the rainbow.

Surrounding the floor were tables with bottle service and an older crowd that in some cases, unfortunately, did not appear to be as enthusiastic about the music.

What was really remarkable about Fairmont’s live set was that it was not a computer that he was using, but instead several drum machines and a microphone for his occasionally lively sung vocals.

More vocals would have been great – but he was focused on the percussive emphasis for his club set.

He used an MPC-1000, an all-in one drum machine with both a sequencer and sampler, which was Roger Linn’s old hip hop machine of choice

Using the Dave Smith Evolver to make his sounds instead of Ableton Live on a laptop like most performers today do, he then programmed and triggered the sounds using the MPC.

Fairmont used quite a unique set up, which highlighted his artistic ability.

His most recent, fourth full-length album is brimming with greatness.

Originally marrying techno and rock sounds, Fairmont’s music has evolved further with his latest album and his set includes surf/rock/electro, drugged out, trance-inducing highs, spacey melodic synths and his signature—very personal, heartfelt lyrics.

He’s remarkably been able to round out the various genres nicely for the dance floor.

Fairmont is definitely worth checking out live.

-
Photos taken by PJay@nyex.org.

• (3) Comments
• (731) Views
• Find Fairmont on Beatport