It was just a couple days after Dan Bell had played Cambridge, that M_nus artist Troy Pierce, also known as Louderbach and one-third of Run Stop Restore, came by to play a set in downtown Boston on January 25th. As it often is with these one-off gigs, I am heading towards a place I’ve never been before, the top floor of a club called Felt on the outskirts of Chinatown. This place is pretty posh looking and probably is home to many more hip-hop nights than techno parties. But hey, they are offering free drinks.Oh. And the place has an excellent sound system, as well. There is nothing worse than dancing and trying to envelop yourself in the groove because the sound is too weak to smother you by itself. Pierce goes on a little before midnight and is playing and mixing new tracks from his laptop all night long, so it’s gladly not a night where any of my rampant music geek desires to have tracks identified shows up. With my brain free to roam, Pierce throws down a great opening half-hour that swirls from funky to nearly gothic techno, yet curiously the momentum is a bit stolid, as every track has practically the same stark, pinpoint kick drum and thick, mechanical hi-hat. So after about a solid hour of this, people are already starting to leave and Pierce almost seems to admit defeat by playing some vapidly abstract tech-house that encourages the remaining crowd to head towards the bar.

But a funny thing happened at the end of Pierce’s set for me, as I returned out to a mostly empty dance floor. Yes, some of the funk and even some neo-italo elements reappeared at the end, but what got me excited about the rest of the set was the enthusiasm of the two people dancing next to me, who I’d never met before but were still egging me on to dance with them. Just as friends feed of their common interests, a lot of my dancing adrenalin comes from the energy of other people in the room. By the end, my boundless energy even surprised myself, it really didn’t matter what music Pierce was playing, or how good it was, I had hit such an empathic high with those around me that all I needed was for music to be there to let myself go wild.

[Michael F. Gill]