Daniel Avery – Tremor: Album Review

Live4ever 30 October, 2025

Artwork for the Daniel Avery album Tremor

4 stars hq

Daniel Avery delves more into the noise that soundtracked his teenage years, a process of shaping the present by validating his past.

All those superstar DJs, where are they now?

Well, not these days appearing on Boiler Room but that’s an entirely different thing.

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And anyway, Daniel Avery has never really fitted in comfortably with the put-your-hands-in-the-air mob, mostly because his career as a producer and performer has pulled him into so many interesting places.

Tremor is no different. The follow up to 2022’s stunning Ultra Truth, on it he delves more into the noise that soundtracked his teenage years in genteel Bournemouth, a process of shaping the present by validating his past.

It was a state of mind which also to an extent informed the artists he chose as collaborators – the troupe effect he says, ‘a living and breathing collective’, its output helping him channel, ‘the welcoming spirit of acid house with the doors flung open wider still to allow in every influence from my musical journey: the warmth of distortion, the stillness inside intensity, the transcendental beauty of noise’.

One of those inspired decisions was to convince The Kills’ Alison Mosshart to work with him on Greasy Off The Racing Line, a sinuous, sleazy, sub-bass driven epic, her Dominatrix vibe gleefully stains a track on which Daniel Avery puts a lid on his awe and melts the boundaries of club centric noise, leaving a dry residue of lust and guilt behind.

Also on the list of obsessions was Rival Schools’ Walter Schreifels, who wisely lets himself succumb to the sinuous waves of In Keeping (Soon We’ll Be Dust).

Set out in quiet/loud flows that were Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine’s famous mode, as well as hero placement it’s also in part an acknowledgement of how much closer shoegaze and electronic music have become.

This cross pollination has been inevitable because of the way both use washes and walls of hypnotic sounds to drown their listeners.

This makes some of the other guest choices interesting: bdrmm’s ecstasy-soaked last album Microtonic had them swirling, but here A Silent Shadow’s shifty, tense breaks leave them somewhere in between themselves.

Also of the newer generation of FX-pedal pushers, NewDad’s Julie Dawson by contrast gets to play a more familiar vocal role, gently caressing The Ghost Of Her Smile‘s otherwise thrashed out dream pop.

As should be apparent by now, whatever your perspective embracing Tremors isn’t always that easy, but there are passages during which you can see the mainstream on the other side of the glass.

In this half-light, the diaphanous trip hop of Disturb Me glows courtesy of the x factor brought by enigmatic Singaporean yeule whilst on New Life, Yunè Pinku escapes the confines of a former life in garage via a tumbling break and wispy fronds of ambient synth.

The peak of this art-pop exaltation however comes with Rapture In Blue, which features a glossy chiming guitar part from the omnipresent Andy Bell and soul dripping vocals from Cecile Believe.

Less rough edged than the rest, it’s a love song that’s alone in form here, but taken in this abstract it’s easy to see how close to the overground Daniel Avery’s footsteps could take him.

If you were expecting Tremors to be an orthodox record then clearly you haven’t to this point been listening.

On it, Daniel Avery has inspired and been inspired by the people he worked with, reshaping his music in the process and channelling the diverse threads and inclusivity of thought which many forms in this arc are in serious danger of forsaking.

In his own way it just confirms once more that he’s a superstar – but he’s also a DJ.

Andy Peterson

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Tags:andy peterson, daniel avery