- In early November, half of the city of Manchester was celebrating Guy Fawkes' foiled plot to blow up British Parliament with fireworks and bonfires. A notable distraction, only brave promoters significantly spend on events during this weekend. Still, drunk on gunpowder or not, people came to Sound Control to see Adam Shelton and Lee Foss. And in serious numbers too. So many, in fact, that when we arrived a group of students were already unsuccessfully trying to pay past the bouncers.
You can understand why. Lee Foss' name is a hot one at the moment. Stateside, he's loosely affiliated with the Wolf + Lamb crew, while collaborative productions with Jamie Jones as Hot Natured have garnered widespread acclaim. In contrast, Adam Shelton's name may have graced global venues like Berlin's Panorama Bar, but it's the heads-down approach as resident at Birmingham's Below that often gets people talking.
Photo credit: Sam Hull
Surprising, then, that the Foss was the one that began around 11:30 PM. He kept things West Coast (his adopted home) with low-slung shufflers stepping out for a stroll, and disco breaks dropped atop classic-but-twisted club vocals. Plenty of ass-shaking moments were provided, but at times things suffered from the oft-frustrating frame of contemporary house music, happily cruising along, inoffensively, in third gear.
A few hours later and the crowd, by now ready for something more, welcomed Shelton and noises synonymous with a packed, post-industrial venue in the midst of Saturday's early hours. Think sharp percussion, T-Bone beats and almost inaudible lyrical hooks, mixed together with an emphasis on continual propulsion. Pounding, tough, relentless, there was little to deny his bass-heavy, groove infected nods to the best of Mr G's vocal trickery, the wide drums of Terry Francis, and Craig Richards' perpetual intent. Shelton doesn't sound like any of these three exactly. But the fact that he recalled them all on this night points to his serious potential.