Nick Warren
Sat, 11pm, Skitz, 1/F Jubilee Centre, 18 Fenwick St, Wan Chai, $240 (advance, HMV), $280 (door). Inquiries: 6554 7777
Nick Warren was one of the leading lights of the 'DJ as superstar' movement of the past decade, but don't talk to him about the bursting of the dance-music bubble - he's still playing like it's 1999.
Seen as a dedicated turntable craftsman, Warren (right) is known for his perfectly sculpted sets - beginning with a deep take on house and transforming, as the club mood changes, into some harder musical territory. Then, when the lights are low and smoke fills the room, melodies rise out of the darkness and clubbers are taken on a journey through some of the deepest tech-trance ever committed to vinyl.
It's these peaks and troughs that many say sort the men from the boys in the world of DJ-ing, and Warren's got it down pat - the man knows how to work a club, to take a crowd high, and then higher again.
The musical landscape has shifted since the British DJ and his Global Underground stablemates, Sasha and John Digweed, ruled clubland in the late 1990s with their pulsating progressive house and trance sets, but Warren has always seen the arrival of new sounds such as breakbeat and drum'n'bass as a positive force.
