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Concert reviews Music

Delroy Edwards at Parts & Labour

DELROY EDWARDS at Parts & Labour, Friday, March 20. Rating: NNNN

While only a few years into his career, Los Angeles DJ/producer Delroy Edwards already has substantial buzz building around his idiosyncratic mix of spooky lo-fi acid techno and thugged-out hip-hop influences, and so the basement of Parts & Labour was packed for his Toronto debut. He embraces an aggressively raw, noisy aesthetic in both his custom slow motion remixes of classic gangsta rap, and in his punishingly bleak proto-house beats. Somehow, he manages to find a surprising amount of common ground between the half-time beats of the former and the pummelling kick drums of the latter.

Edwards started his set with chopped-and-screwed g-funk beats, often playing edits that reduced songs to just the shout-along choruses. That flavour went over fine with the crowd, but when he bumped things up to techno speed the room really started responding. Everything sounded like it was run through an old tape deck, and that hiss, static and distortion are an integral part of his vibe. At times he seemed to be deliberately testing the patience of the dance floor, but the crowd seemed up for anything he threw at them.

benjaminb@nowtoronto.com | @benjaminboles

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