Gareth Emery brings Drive to Story Miami

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WMC and Ultra ended little over a week ago and I figured most would still be recuperating and the turnout to see Gareth Emery at Story last night would be on the thinner side. I figured wrong. Miami came out strong, which is a testament to its insatiable appetite for partying and Gareth Emery’s ability to pack a venue.

Gareth, more colloquially known as Gaz, has been putting out quality tracks long before launching his own label Garuda – but since the release of its inaugural trance compilation The Sound of Garuda in ’09 and with the maturation of his own sound and style, he’s rightfully earned a big name for himself and a following to match over the past few years.

He hit his stride in 2011 with a few great remixes including Oceanlab’s anthem “On A Good Day” and Britney Spears’ “I Wanna Go” and right around the time the electronic music scene blew up in 2012, so did he with his biggest hit to date “Concrete Angel”.

Emery is a classically trained pianist and writes all of his own music too, which makes for a particularly original sound in a field that advancements in digital production have unfortunately seemed to level out. Still, real talent will always find a way to stand out and that background comes through on earlier tracks from Northern Lights like “Too Dark Tonight”, a collaboration with his sister Roxanne and “I Will Be The Same”, which contains vocals from Emma Hewitt, who’s voice all but guarantees timeless sound and a successful track.

His first full album in 3 years, Drive, was inspired by a cross-country road trip, which inspired other artists to remix those tracks and in true Garuda fashion (see Northern Lights: Re-lit), led to Drive: Refueled. Released earlier last month, he’s back on the road for select US and Canadian shows promoting those albums and giving festival and club goers a taste of what they’ll discover when they listen to them, while still playing all the GE favorites you’d expect to hear.

Story’s resident DJ Dave Sol opened the night, mixing an eclectic blend of house beats with remixes of familiar classics and added his signature dash of Miami spice. The crowd responded in kind and started to warm up as he dropped 4-on-the-floor rhythms that got feet moving and the temperature rising. At 1:30 on the dot, he handed off the decks and Gareth took over to thunderous applause, blinding lights and a flurry of confetti.

His set started with blazing synth sounds that I could best describe as a Nintendo game’s soundtrack having just snorted a rail of cocaine, but was more likely a sample from the appropriately named and sequenced Drive track “Entrada”.  Clearly packed full of energy and all-smiles, Gareth was bouncing around in the booth and clapping on beat to get the crowd even rowdier. He built the set with some more obscure tracks like Fabian Flores’ “Lara” and worked in people pleasers like Tiesto’s remix of “All of Me” and the remix of Bastille’s Pompeii from Audien. Then he got to the meat and potatoes and mashed Bruno Mars “Heaven” with one of the bigger tracks from Drive “Dynamite”, whose video was shot down in Miami during Ultra.

Gaz has been known for his solid remixes for a while and it was only fitting he followed with his spin on Krewella’s “Lights & Thunder”, which flipped to one of my favorite tracks from Drive, “U” and no GE set would be complete without the classic “Concrete Angel” which was one of the last he played.

With a seemingly endless catalogue of original tracks and Garuda releases, I would’ve liked to hear a set composed exclusively of those, but there’s a reason he’s the DJ and I’m not. Rule #1 of DJing is know your crowd and give them what they want. At least the majority of them – you can’t please everyone all the time.

Life on the road can be tough for any artist; even more so for a fairly-new family man like Gaz. He and wife Kat welcomed their daughter into the world not even a month ago and yesterday was Kat’s birthday. Still, duty calls and so he hopped on a plane and flew from LA to MIA to act as the Garuda ambassador and deliver tracks for his .While he’s put long-distance travel and tours on the back burner to be a good husband and father and spend time with his family (the other upside of which is he said he’s working on a new album in his home studio due out later this year), Gareth will be doing a few one-off shows in the US and Canada and seeing him is definitely worth the price of admission.  I left reeking of cigarettes, ears ringing and thoroughly satisfied.