Avery isn’t arguing for some mythical golden age, and he isn’t dismissing the new generation entering electronic music. His concern is simpler: the warehouse parties in Chicago, the birth of Detroit techno, the acid house explosion in Britain in the late eighties, the early days of New York’s queer club scene. None of those movements emerged as intellectual exercises. They emerged because people were searching for collective experiences unavailable anywhere else, and their power came from participation, not analysis. “I do firmly believe it has a real link to spirituality,” Avery says. “Almost religion.” The comparison might sound grandiose if similar language hadn’t appeared throughout club culture’s history, from sociologists comparing raves to secular rituals to Germany’s formal recognition of clubs as legitimate artistic institutions. I mention seeing Charlotte de Witte at Brooklyn Mirage and being struck by the gap between how society treats opera houses and how it treats dance floors. Avery laughs. Germany, he points out, comes closer than most to closing that gap. “People get their backs up about the scene sometimes,” he says. “But anyone can come. That’s the beauty of it.”
That openness is central to who he is as an artist, and it also informs his discomfort with increasingly rigid ideas around authenticity and belonging. The original spirit of acid house was radically inclusive. Anyone could walk through the door. But Avery is equally aware that escapism has its limits. As a younger man he was captivated by clubbing’s ability to make reality temporarily disappear. “I still believe in that,” he says. “But it is a fine balance.” The older he gets, the less interested he becomes in choosing between those worlds, the kinetic energy of the club on one side, silence and nature and solitude on the other, and the more drawn he is to the point where they intersect. Whether making the euphoric techno of Drone Logic, the ambient expansiveness of Illusion of Time, the widescreen electronics of Together in Static or the shadowy intensity of his most recent album Tremor, Avery keeps returning to the same emotional territory: not darkness for its own sake, but the peculiar warmth that can exist inside it. When he talks about Tremor, he references Massive Attack, Portishead, Nick Cave, Aphex Twin, David Lynch and David Fincher, artists who shared a fascination with ambiguity, whose work was unsettling but also strangely inviting. “Something about that late-’90s aesthetic just went in very deep,” he says.
As our conversation winds down, I ask Avery about something I’d heard the night before while watching Jerry Saltz speak at VIVID Sydney. The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic was talking about the importance of getting out into the world and living what he calls “an artistic life” — seeing exhibitions, watching films, having conversations, remaining curious, resisting the temptation to retreat entirely into work. I wonder what that looks like for someone whose life is already spent moving between cities, stages and studios.
“I try and consume as much art as possible,” he says. “Going to see films as much as I can. See other bands, other DJs, museums, all of that stuff. It’s just a constant reminder of the power of art and the beauty of art in this world.” He talks, too, about getting outside, about finding moments away from the constant momentum of touring and making records. “Anything that can break away from that and remind us that we’re all here for a much greater purpose than just to work,” he says. “That’s what I’m into.”
A few days later, he’ll bring that perspective to Melbourne’s RISING festival before heading north for VIVID Sydney. The cities change, so do the venues, but the ritual remains much the same.
For all the discussion surrounding contemporary club culture, Avery’s faith remains remarkably simple. Put people in a room together. Give them something to get lost in. Leave the rest up to our collective humanity. That sincerity, the desire to deliver something beautiful, is what makes his work such a gift, one that can live both on a dance floor and far beyond.
