Loco... another recipe for insomnia

Room1>Ashley Casselle, Jody Wisternoff, Paul Loraine & Tracy Caldwell

Room2>

As most promoters appear to have registered, putting on a big club night in the first week of the new year is a touch optimistic. Even the most hardened bon viveur generally requires at least a fortnight to emerge from their post-NYE fug, dust off the silly string and return to the dancefloor fray.

Such party-pooping pragmatism does not deter Bristol's Loco, however, who welcome longstanding house guru Ashley Casselle to Timbuk2 on Saturday.

Hastings boy Casselle has ample pedigree in commercial dance circles, fraternising with John Digweed (a fellow Sussex boy who gave him his first DJing break), Sasha and Paul van Dyk. A residency at Sheffield superclub Gatecrasher was Casselle's passport to international notoriety, and he soon began spreading his epic, groove-led gospel of progressive house, techno and breaks to distant outposts including China, Brazil and Singapore.

Releasing his own material as Daydreemer in the early 1990s, nowadays Casselle forms part of production duo Ashtrax alongside James Christopher; yet recently a series of collaborations with vocalist Ben Lost led to The Remote, his most celebrated project yet. Debut album Too Low To Miss, produced with third member Asad Rivzi, came out on Global Underground last year and melds Casselle's distinctly Ibizan musical mindset to the wintry melancholy of Depeche Mode and Joy Division. Expect the former to permeate his three hour stint behind the Loco decks.

Words By: John Stevens