DANNY HOWELLS

And the art of the long-form DJ set

By BRENT T. INGRAM

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To continue the 10th anniversary of Boston's only after-hours club, Rise decided to reach for a top-shelf DJ, the Grey Goose of club-land (if you will); and naturally, they found DJ Danny Howells.

For a full nine years, Howells repped new sounds hard as the official in-house opening DJ for Bedrock, the name-brand trance club founded and promoted by one John Digweed. Howells never took opening lightly, and instead worked to lather the crowd into a frenzy with the rarer side of techno and trance, keeping ears and eyes on their proverbial tiptoes. This culminated in the release of the Noctural Frequencies, the first CD from of the oft-triumphed UK label Obsessive.

But his next trick was pretty much unheard of. Howells, in a move away from the pop-trend at the time, began to demand DJ sets of seven hours or more.

"He has some legendary sets under his belt," says resident DJ Mike Swells on the phone while getting his hair cut. "He's been doing these sort of marathon sets for a long time. They can start at an ambient downtempo style and end up in a special place at the end of the night.

"He still embodies the idea of a journey," says Swells. "It's the old cliché like that but it's really way more developed. It's undeniable."

"The significant thing about this night is he's playing a long set from someone that really does it well," says Rise owner Tom Beaulieu. Rise usually features more chilled music on the first floor of the club, with a proper dancefloor style upstairs. "People don't want to miss it when they go downstairs, and that's the case with him."

DANNY HOWELLS

FRI. 5.16

RISE

306 STUART ST.

BOSTON

617.423.7473

1AM/18+/$10 MEMBERS,$25 GUESTS

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