Anna Gorick reports on The Priory, with Adam Freeland – Fez Club, Cambridge, 21 June

Artist Visiting Cambridgeshire
The revered DJ Adam Freeland kindly chose to include Cambridge's ramshackle yet quirky Fez nightclub in his global underground tour. His scintillating sound also touched the musical base of heavyweight venues in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and the Glastonbury Festival. Originally a deep house lover, Freeland became known for effortlessly merging hip-hop and electro into sets. He pioneered the sub-genre of ‘Nu-School breaks'; a mix-match that combines breakbeats with an eclectic range of influences including techno, drum and bass and world music.

In his early twenties, the London born man had successfully gained popular DJ prominence. The then newly established magazine Dazed and Confused gave Freeland his first gig at ‘Café Paris', who masterfully rocked the joint. Freeland's fair hands have also reworked and manipulated sounds by Orbital, the Orb, Deejay Punk-Roc, and Headrillaz. In order to acknowledge unsigned experimental music, Adam swam against stream and created his own record label based in Brighton called Marine Parade.

The new album, entitled Global Underground - Mexico City twists and veers into unexpected territory. It's all about an immense throbbing, pulsating bass, which sums up the feeling of the exceptional night in the ‘Bridge'.

Adam Freeland's set symbolises a conveyer belt that delivers a medley of dirty, pumping and dark tracks in gorgeous succession from one to the next. He is the ultimate crowd-pleaser, with cleverly orchestrated manoeuvres from an intense electro pulse pounding through your veins to chilled ‘hands in air' respite.

The broad spectrum of punters includes students, locals, some overly conscious fashion heads and a few select elders dotted around the edges of the dance floor. Everyone willingly and happily succumbs to Freeland's seductive advances. His tee shirt states ‘Love is the Drug', a poignant phrase in this age of anxiety due to continuing conflict and terror. Worries melt away and are forgotten in this brief flirtation with quality music that demands its receptors to shake their booty any which way. Freeland is on fire and is illuminating the path that leads to smashing expected musical moulds and formulas.


Writer: Anna Gorick