Music
Larry Heard live in Sydney
The Chicago house icon closed out RBMA Weekender Sydney with an unforgettable live show.
Larry Heard live
© Voena
Larry Heard might strike you as a most improbable figure to wear the mantle of house-music legend, especially if you take the current state of things in the industry as definitive. He’s about as far from the image of the muscular, tattooed, black-T-shirt clad house gangsta rocking Ibiza or Southport as one can possibly be. A devoutly religious man, the Chicago native now resides in Memphis, Tennessee. He’s a very slight 56-year-old who wears thick horn-rimmed glasses and favours oversized button-up shirts and a University of Memphis Tigers baseball cap. He looks like a nerdy jazz musician, or like your dad.
Larry Heard live
© Voena
His music, too, defies all industry convention. The old-school classics like 'Mystery of Love' and ‘Can You Feel It’ – on which he revolutionised the sound of deep house under his moniker Mr. Fingers – are widely revered; but he’s spent the past 25 years looking forward instead of trading on those hits, and he’s never sold out to make commercial house or formulaic garage. Instead he’s been amazingly consistent with a highly personal kind of ethereal, jazz-infused deep house marked by his distinctive keyboard work and whispery vocals, along with regular excursions into exquisitely textured techno and acid. Though it’s much more airy and delicate than most chugging dancefloor output, and impossible to classify, his music still broadly connects with a generation of fans who were kids or weren’t even born when ‘ Mystery of Love’ came out, thanks to high-profile work like his gorgeous remix of Disclosure’s ‘ Help Me Me Lose My Mind.’ Heard’s career is the story of one of the good guys winning – especially with the attention and acclaim he’s now receiving for his first live shows in more than 20 years.
Lorna Clarkson
© Voena
For this reason, it was deeply satisfying to witness the ecstatic reception Heard received at his live gig at RBMA Weekender Sydney; and even more so that it was such a splendid performance. This was part of Heard’s first-ever tour of Australia – as it happens, Melbourne and Sydney were his first stops after debuting his new live project at Dimensions Festival in Croatia two weeks ago. That sense of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a living legend certainly added to the excitement in the warehouse-like Bay 17 at Carriageworks on Sunday night as Heard closed the Weekender. For his fans young and old in Sydney, it was well worth the wait and anticipation. His set was nothing short of spectacular, one of the best live electronic performances in memory. It highlighted all of Heard’s strengths, all of his mastery of the form, for a crowd of hundreds in a celebratory, rave-like atmosphere.
For some reason I was expecting the evening to be more mellow, jazzy and intimate, given Heard’s recent work. I expected a house master playing a refined show for his longtime fans – and that would have been fine with me. Instead, to my delight, the event felt like a larger edition of Mad Racket – especially after Racket resident Simon Caldwell’s brilliant opening set – with a kicking system and a diverse, up-for-it crowd, including many younger fans, that came to dance and revel. It was, in other words, not an occasion for chin-stroking, but a party, and Heard rocked that party in incomparable fashion.
Simon Caldwell
© Voena
The diminutive Heard took the stage to a big, affectionate cheer from the packed house and positioned himself behind a long, neat row of machines and keyboards. SOUL-DEEP-ACID ELECTRO-VISUAL EXPERIENCE flashed on a large screen behind the stage. After some swooshing noise, as darkness fell over the theatre and blueish light from the abstract visuals on the screen flickered on the faces of the punters, the set began with a dubby version of ‘Mystery of Love’ – its immortal bassline immediately getting the dancefloor pumping. I momentarily wondered if the set would rely too heavily on Heard’s classics – if it would be a deep-house version of Giorgio Moroder’s recent ‘live’ sets – but I should have known better. After only a few bars of ‘Mystery,’ Heard immediately shifted gears into some wicked, sinuous, thumping acid, and at that point the crowd knew they were in for it. Then Heard took to the microphone and his familiar, wonderfully silky and soulful vocals rang out clearly across the theatre, beautifully balanced in the mix with the booming bass; and another rousing cheer rose from the captivated punters.
Larry Heard
© Voena
Soon Heard was joined onstage by vocal collaborator Mr. White, most familiar to fans from the now-classic 2006 tracks ‘ The Sun Can’t Compare’ and ‘ You Rock Me.’ White’s voice is earthier and more more robust than Heard’s, but when their vocals joined together in a duo the effect was spine-tingling. White, who was rocking shades and a massive gold chain like an ’80s rapper, acted as hype man when he wasn’t singing, giving a welcome, effusive energy to the set.
By now it was apparent that rather than resting on his laurels as a legacy act, Heard was determined to wreck shop. The set had some of the energy of a DJ mix by Fred P., with its precise control, relentless 4/4 bass and liquid flow – pulsating hypnotic acid and techno regularly opening up into soul and jazz like the sun shining through clouds. And indeed, Heard gave Bay 17 a bit of a Panorama Bar-type feel, with hundreds of dancers whooping and writhing with every bass drop and acid line. Heard’s singular, precise keyboard riffing – the origin of his Fingers alias – was not flashy but added a nice jazzy element to the mix. His smiling, nonchalant onstage manner was a contrast to the hugeness of the sound. In general Heard and White could do no wrong by the crowd; their each move or vocal effort was greeted with mounting cheers as if they were R&B stars headlining a big festival.
Larry Heard live
© Voena
Larry Heard live
© Voena
Heard struck a terrific balance between tantalising reworked versions of his classics and newer material. I especially appreciated that he played quite a few tracks from his 2000 LP ‘Love’s Arrival’, my favourite album by him. ‘ Praise,’ a midtempo gospel-soul number from that album, was transformed into a thumping deep-house floor-destroyer with a stirring vocals from Mr. White that got hands raised in churchy fashion. ‘You Rock Me’ was equally powerful. But the climax was undoubtedly the athemic vocal ‘The Sun Can’t Compare,’ with the entire theatre singing along with the keening chorus as they swayed to the pounding acid bass of the track. It was absolutely hair-raising. So was the encore of ‘ Missing You’ and ‘Can You Feel It,’ as the crowd joined together for a final dance in celebration of Heard’s matchless sound and his legacy, a sublime end to an enchanting evening. In the end it was like spending 90 minutes in a world where proper deep, soulful house is music for the masses – a small slice of heaven on earth for fans of Heard and of the music he helped innovate.
