NYC:  Kenneth Thomas and D:FUSE at Sullivan Room

NYC:  Kenneth Thomas and D:FUSE at Sullivan Room

2 March, 2008 | 9.20PM

• Section: Music News Topics: Beatport Blog
• Written by: GirlSonic

My auditory stamina is limited when it comes to Trance. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a blissed out spiritual speaking-in-tongues kind of vibe. I do.

The problem is the ducking bass line. After three or four tracks I start to feel as though there is water in my ears. I get the urge to slap the heel of my hand against the side of my head, to dislodge the hydraulic fluid sloshing around in there.

So I figured on an abbreviated stay at the Sullivan Room last night, where self-described trance DJ Kenneth Thomas would be representing Detroit’s finest.

Preceding KT’s set, DJ D:FUSE worked the crowd up into a foamy lather with an unrelenting groove, and the bongo riffs he pummeled out of a Handsonic percussion controller added a tasty Caribbean spice. No question, the guy’s got rhythm, and an infectious grin.

It was after 3 am and my energy was starting to flag when Kenneth Thomas stepped up to the decks. Seriously, the superfragilistic D:FUSE had set the bar high, and I was almost sure that Detroit would let us down a little.

Not even! Right off the bat, Mr. Thomas crunched out a high precision, intricate attention-getter, and I could sense the crowd pausing, regrouping, and thinking, “whoa, what do we have here??”

Slamming the floor with ultratight bone-shaking beats, KT put down a hard-driving precision mix of progressive, electro, breaks, and yes, trance. Terrific trance. Heart-swellingly so.

The entire set was made fabulous by one ecstatic transition after another, although I’m still getting over some of the almost painfully inaudible high frequency swells.

Kenneth Thomas is a very talented dance apostle. And my auditory cortex is still as happy as an altar call at a revival camp.

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