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Pictureplane, the 26-year-old producer Travis Egedy, makes big-room music for small spaces. Tonight, touring on his clubbiest album yet, Thee Physical, he’s playing the least clubby of venues—Subterranean A, a private residence located around the corner and down a staircase from a cluster of actual nightclubs. But there’s no irony here. Though Pictureplane runs his finger across a highly accessible library of ’90s club tunes, he embraces the dungeon. The black leather-gloved hands in Thee Physical’s artwork resurrect the dark dance music heroes of the 1980s: Liasons Dangereuses, D.A.F., Fad Gadget. On “Trancegender,” “Real is a Feeling,” and “Techno Fetish,” Egedy’s captivation with sexual ambiguity and subversion is crystal clear—albeit a little stuck in an undergrad gender studies workshop. But the real subversion is in his hodgepodge of influences: The album snacks on darkwave, drum & bass, electro, and diva-licious handbag house—convincingly and often pleasurably. Pictureplane’s touring mates Teengirl Fantasy, a couple other guys known for unearthing ’90s pop just to smack it around, make this show a giddy exercise in cruel and unusual punishment.
Pictureplane performs with Teengirl Fantasy and Gatekeeper at Subterranean A.