“I feel like this is the biggest crowd I’m ever going to get,” Tourist tells the 3,300-capacity Roundhouse crowd. He might be saying this with a healthy dose of British self-deprecation – he has just come off the back of a flurry of dates across the US and Europe, and has previously supported the likes of Bonobo – but there’s veracity to his words.
The artistic vehicle of William Philips, Tourist has never been one to seek mass appeal or commercial opportunism – even by the electronic world’s own mercurial standards. That’s not to say he doesn’t know how: as a songwriter, Philips has production credits with artists as mainstream as Sam Smith, Jessie Ware and the late Avicii.
Instead, his world has often been an intricate blend of deft house and kaleidoscopic synth-pop; the sort you’d imagine soundtracking a visual arts installation (the kind of “immersive” experience that’s currently all the rage). His latest, fifth studio album, Memory Morning, maintained this velvety approach, with samples as delicate as Mark Fry’s ‘Song for Wilde’ (‘A Little Bit Further’) and a sonic trickling effect on tracks like ‘Crush’.
The point being: for a Friday night at one of London’s premier venues, with the warmth drip-feeding us the possibility of summer, Tourist isn’t the standard bearer for wild ecstasy. Even he once jokingly described his work as “dance music but you don’t really dance to it.” So would he be able to translate his finely-tuned melodies into the big room? Yes, it turns out – and pretty bloody well too.
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With a four-walled encasing of strobe lights beaming upwards from the ground, as though boxed in a part of the Northern Lights phenomenon hitting UK skies this weekend, Tourist constructed his set in big bold waves that rose and fell, contracted and released.
We might not have been treated to the music video for his track ‘Valentine’, but its use of synchronised swimmers is a pretty apt way to describe Tourist’s sound; one that submerges you into its sonic waves, with jagged beats running across the top. Axel Boman meets Denis Sulta.
The whirring cries on track ‘Bunny’ proved a highlight, but it was material from Inside Out (released via Tourist’s own Monday Records imprint) which bordered the sublime, as ‘A Dedication’ washed through you, hitting a sweet spot of emotive electronics. For ‘Your Love’, we were treated to its dazzling and mildly sinister music video, involving a man setting himself ablaze, on the screen above. (I’m told the size of the screen was increased ahead of the show, following an effective wide-screen showing in New York).
The creation of Inside Out took hold amid the death of the producer’s close friend and the birth of his daughter during the pandemic – a part-euphoric, part-melancholic genesis that gives it such weight. When the producer spoke to whynow about the record upon its release, he said its club-inspired moments were born out of “feeling a lack of connection” at the time of creating it. “I guess it’s like a dance record about death,” he added, his words now fairly prescient for a gig such as this. Rather than a raucous get-together to kickstart the weekend, there was calm, composure, beauty – and it worked.
Reviewing any sort of electronic event is typically a fraught game, with no performance per se to sink your teeth into. But the post-pandemic bounce of dance music means we should pay deference to this typically scoffed-at genre, as well as those who traverse its peripheries such as Tourist.
His gig at the Roundhouse might have been the biggest headline show he feels he’ll play, but let’s drop the self-deprecation for a moment: this is a show which can, and should, be heard on the big stages.
