Richie Hawtin Announces the Return of CLOSE to North America at Avant Gardner in NYC December 8

Iconic electronic music artist and technology visionary RICHIE HAWTIN today (July 25) announces he will return to North America at the end of 2018 for his only territory show this year of CLOSE - his award-winning audio-visual show which takes you closer to his unique way of performing. The British / Canadian artist will play an extended show at Brooklyn's Avant Gardner in New York City on Saturday, December 8 produced by OUTPOST Events.

Pre-sale starts today, July 25 at 10am with code closelive at

https://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/1737812?utm_medium=close.

General on-sale starts this Monday, July 30.

The show, CLOSE - SPONTANEITY AND SYHNCHRONICITY, explores the relationship between human creativity and the innovative technologies that enable an artist to express themselves. The show was voted Best Live Performance at the Ibiza DJ Awards this year and Best Live Performance 2017 at the DJ Awards. Having debuted the concept at Coachella followed by shows at Primavera Sound, ADE and Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House, CLOSE opens up the DJ booth for a transparent masterclass in Spontaneity & Synchronicity. It represents how far the art of DJing can be pushed today, thanks to a completely improvised performance which means no two shows are the same.

In recent years, HAWTIN's pioneering work has crossed over into artistic and cultural fields, collaborating with Anish Kapoor--one of the most influential sculptors working today--at the Grand Palais in Paris; performing live as Plastikman at the Guggenheim in New York for fashion designer Raf Simons; and creating soundscapes to the photographic work of Andreas Gursky at the Gagosian in New York and K20 in Dusseldorf. HAWTIN's electronic productions and DJ sets make him one of the most respected artists to emerge from the early 1990s techno scene.

Support for CLOSE at Avant Gardner NYC will be announced at a later time, including a very special guest artist.

RICHIE HAWTIN states, "New York has been important to me since the early 1990s from the early Storm raves, record shopping at Sonic Groove, and meeting new friends like Joey Beltram and Sven Vath at New Music Seminar, to years of great times at different clubs and venues from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I'm looking forward to presenting CLOSE at Avant Gardner, a show where I feel you get to see me at my best!"

The Great Hall at Avant Gardner is the quintessential Brooklyn industrial warehouse, that's anything but. A massive and soaring space equipped with KV2 Audio's VHD5.0 sound system, customizable rigging capabilities and fully programmable lighting fixtures built to immerse attendees in the ultimate show experience.

OUTPOST is an event series produced by the award-winning team at OUTPUT featuring top tier electronic artists in world-class performance spaces.

CLOSE in the press:

"Canadian techno maestro Richie Hawtin used the Coachella platform to debut an entire new project, CLOSE: Spontaneity & Synchronicity. What has kept Hawtin (and his Plastikman alter alias) relevant for two decades in the fickle world of electronic dance music is his unique ability to evolve. Just because you saw a Hawtin set 20 or 15 or five years ago doesn't mean you'll have any idea of what you will witness next. The Close concept is both sonic and visual. Strategically placing various cameras around his rig, the idea is to give viewers a more intimate view of how he summons his music from his hard drive and manipulates it for the audience. In the three screens behind him, you could see Hawtin's hands triggering buttons, selecting tracks and performing the basic knob twiddles. Visually, the uniformity of the presentation eliminated the visual flare that defines so many EDM performances."
- Nic Stecher, Rolling Stone (4/17/17)

"Richie Hawtin has never been one to sit on his laurels. Over the course of a multi-decade career spanning varied locales like Detroit, Berlin and Ibiza, the Windsor native has always prioritized pushing things forward by evangelizing new technologies and broadening the boundaries of live electronic music performance. He delighted techno fans with his latest CLOSE live show concept on Coachella's Mojave Stage, combining, digitizing and manipulating multiple video feeds of his onstage controller setup, which included his purely analog PLAYdifferently MODEL 1 mixer."
- Billboard (4/18/17)

"Richie Hawtin debuted his highly-anticipated audiovisual show CLOSE at Coachella over the weekend and did not disappoint with unveiling the captivating concept. Using video mapping technology, viewers are presented with a unique perspective of Richie's live performance. The visuals reveal his actual movements on stage, with a variety of angles and views of his gear as he executes the live show."
- Harrison Williams, Mixmag (4/18/17)

"While live electronic music is beginning to become almost as prevalent as DJ sets in the current era, there is currently no performance which matches the elaborate echelon which Hawtin has reached with CLOSE. As the spontaneity of his cerebral techno improvisations met with the synchronicity of his compelling visual production, Hawtin's new live project lived up to its name more than duly."
- Will McCarthy, Dancing Astronaut (4/15/17)