Pitchfork London 2025: Marie Davidson

Everything felt entirely incongruous, at least initially.  Fabric.  On a Thursday.  With absolutely no queue.  Or search.  Or seemingly anyone else in the entire venue as I descended flight after flight after flight of a stark industrial staircase.  A journey I’ve taken many a time, down into the heart of an unruly and beautiful beast… But never like this.  Silent.  Eerie.  Ominous, even.  Had I got the date wrong?  Or the time?  Was I stepping into some manner of bizarre performance art? Finally seeing signs of other human existence upon entering Room 1 did little to dissipate my nervous discombobulation.  I needed a grounding, quickly.

Fortunately, if anybody is qualified to prevail against those factors, it’s Marie Davidson.  Sure, I was still stone cold sober in a surprisingly sparse Fabric on a Thursday night, but from the moment she stepped out on stage it didn’t remotely matter.  With an oeuvre that could have been created solely to reflect Fabric’s stark, brazen interiors, the high-priestess of artistic techno put on a show that captivated from start to finish.  Her beats literally rattled through every bone in my entire body from the very first drop, perfectly utilising the venue’s legendary soundsystem, lighting and vibrating dancefloor to turn the gig into a full body, sensory overload.  A truly solo performance, she effortlessly switched between a variety of modes throughout - one moment, prowling the stage like a high-kicking glitching prototype version of Peaches, the next ensconcing herself behind her synths of drum machines, constructing a mesmerising, hypnotising techno soundscape, the next jumping down into the crowd to belt out melodies with abandon.  This performance screamed life, energy, humour, intensity and beauty to its very core.  It demanded every soul in attendance’s full, undivided, devoted attention - not that anybody seemed remotely intent on withholding their adoration.  It drove on and on and on, offering a litany of challenges and thrilling deviations, constantly looping back into a catalogue of familiar refrains between wondrous, almost hypnotic builds and connecting pieces.  And it didn’t feel like Thursday in Fabric anymore.  It felt timeless, and wonderful, and like home.

And then, after one final foray into the crowd, eyeballing as many of the assembled masses as possible, she exited through the back door to the lobby.  And as the roar from the crowd dissipated, it was clear that it was still Thursday.  And I was still in Fabric.  And I was a Thameslink train journey away from home - or whatever distance and timeframe between that corner of Smithfield and the next place my path will cross Ms Davidson’s.