Music Lessons #1

Forms Based on Dances

For centuries the dance had above all ritualistic and religious significance. The adoration and propitiation of the gods, prayers for fertility, good weather, and so on, were often expressed by means of dance movements and tunes, either extemporized or traditional. During the periods of the ancient Greeks and Romans the dance slowly evolved from rite to conscious art. But, sacred or secular, and whether art or not, there is something fundamentally erotic in the dance, and this did not please the Church.

During the Middle Ages dance music and dancing in general were frowned on. The dance nevertheless continued among the people, and finally found its renaissance at the various European courts of the sixteenth century. Dances of often rustic origin became widely fashionable and evolved into strongly stylized instrumental pieces, to which in the end no one danced, but simply listened.

Courtesy of Ottó Károlyi. (What a name.)

I’m not sure I like the sound of that. There wasn’t much dancing last night in Oxford, unfortunately, and even less today at Pride in London. This is what happens when you get a cold during the hottest days of the year. Seriously, how? Without Sudafed I am nothing.

It’s been an odd weekend so far, and bound to get odder at Plastic People tonight, where we gather for the collective propitiation of Theo Parrish.

Ben Klock @ WYS

The best press photo ever; ‘uh…Ben…Ben…BEN! You’ve got a mark on your face. Ugh, I think it might be in your hair too! Oh NO it’s EVERYWHERE!’

This was almost 2 hours of non-stop dancing in Room 1, as Ben Klock played tight, finely-woven techno that made me want to be in Berghain right there and then. That appointment’ll have to wait until September, but in the meantime I’m more than satisfied with fabric on Sunday night, a time+setting I couldn’t have imagined a year ago when I worked full-time. Mondays off are just one of the many benefits of being a student. My dissertation deadline looms large.

******

Sunday nights at fabric are the responsibility of the not-so-charmingly named WETYOURSELF. The entry price was far more palatable – i.e. FREE – and they had their own personalised projections up on the walls which gave it a happy party atmosphere. The crowd helped, being pleasantly free of the people that can make Saturdays such a trial. I wonder how many of them had been to the night before for Jay Haze, and I wonder what he played – last year, thanks to being floored by Daniel Bell’s dynamite liveset, I only stuck around for Haze’s opening track, Quarion’s brilliant remix of Jamie Lloyd’s ‘May I?‘.

After my own Ryanair-based trials of Saturday night, I was glad of the opportunity to party on Sunday. We had (several) gin and tonics here, then more out in the square under the suspicious eye of local teenagers (’can I have a cigarette…are you drunk?’), then walked all the way to fabric for a good warm-up. Ben Klock was already on when we arrived and I tried to get some steam up over by the left-hand wall. He was building stuff up slowly, but I found myself wandering around a little.

After a quick trip to the toilets (mercifully free of evil attendants) I decided to set up shop in what has quickly become a favourite spot: quite near the booth, just off to the right, facing the DJ. On busy nights, that’s a good place to go to avoid too much traffic (most of the people coming round the back of the booth seem to head much further in to the room before cutting across) and my left ear starts complaining way earlier than my right, so that orientation evens it out a bit.

That’s when Ben Klock played:

Oooooooh yes. It just creeps and crawls its way up and up…and the sheets of noise get more violent and the kick just keeps coming back.

That was the catalyst for a frenzied hour or so of dancing, not just for me but also for all the people immediately surrounding me. I don’t often feel that much solidarity with the people around me at fabric (this is a part of the experience that seriously lacks on most Saturdays…in other clubs you often get a sense of group mentality and appreciation, but at fabric for me it often becomes a more individual affair through sheer necessity – for one thing, how can you share your reponses with strangers if they’re all wearing sunglasses and have a huge handbag in the way? Maybe I’m exaggerating…) It got a bit loud at times but never unbearable; in fact the worst it got was during ‘OK’, which Klock played towards the end of his set, but I wonder if that track would ever sound that good on most systems…I’ve heard it a few times out and it always sounds like a struggle.

He finished with KiNK’s ‘Blueprint‘, which I’ve been running around telling everyone was ‘Full Flight’ since Steffi played it at the Süd party. It’s the same EP though. Anyway, GOOD SONG, and you can hear the track on his myspace page, which is also hilarious because it makes him look like whatever Google ad comes up first: in my case, a Bulgarian dentist. ‘Blueprint’ is just huge huge huge huge – the snare echoes and then stabs, the cymbals are more often on the beat than off it, which makes it really hard-hitting and invigorating compared to the usual offbeat hihats. And then the breakdown…I suspect it could be a bit long for a lot of people, but I’ve managed to get lost in it quite happily the two times I’ve heard it in a club. I want this record. The other tracks on myspace sound lovely too…as does KiNK himself:

I am Strahil Velchev, a 30 year old guy living in Sofia, or maybe a phat black acid-house pioneer from Chicago, hiding in Bulgaria, with a fake identity;)

i love acid!

Don’t we all!

******

I’m not allowed to buy any more records because I’ve already spent July’s allowance before it has even started. I’ve got a few to keep me going, I guess. And the promise of a company meeting on Friday, Theo Parrish on Saturday, and then OH SO MUCH MORE.

(Did someone mention Prosumer? and GLADE?!)

Vertical Ascent

The queue at Gate 7, Girona Airport, last night.

I’ve spent the last 5 days in the South of France and just over the border in Spain, reading a lot and not doing much else. I came back to London hoping for weather more pleasant than the patchy stuff that had followed us round during the week, but here I am trapped in the flat as apologetic (and frankly pathetic) drizzle falls outside. There’s a kind of fug hanging over the city which, if you were being optimistic, might suggest THUNDERSTORMS and AWESOME LIGHTNING. Instead we get this faint dribble that provides little respite from the mugginess. Apparently there were hailstorms and floods while we were away, so I guess I missed the good stuff.

The most interesting thing about my trip was listening to French radio. Where French TV makes me want to kill myself, the radio station we were tuned to for much of Wednesday was a revelation: lots of voices-only music (sacred stuff, some barbershop quartet, solos); old songs from the 20s and 30s that made me want a gramophone; and then, out of the blue, not only Vitalic’s ‘La Rock 01′ itself, but also a weird orchestral version of it afterwards. If only there were radio stations here that were quite so varied in such a short space of time, I might then have a reason to even think about the radio. (RIP birdsong…)

Ryanair fucked me over at Girona airport last night, so, having had to wait about 5 hours anyway because I got dropped off so early, I then had to endure another 2 hours of waiting while the gate got changed, then reverted, then our plane turned out not to be our plane, etc etc. I was reading Naked Lunch, which made eating a proper evening meal somewhat more difficult than usual, and wasn’t something I really felt comfortable reading while sitting next to a nice old lady on the plane. Her book seemed to be about a couple called Bill and Constance deciding on where to go on holiday. I was reading about…uh, well, the only thing that I think might be less wholesome than A.J.’s annual party is the kind of spam that gets blocked by this wordpress software. Even that’s a close-run thing.

From the air, at night, the towns and villages dotted around the Pyrenees (I think it’s them?) looked like deep-see organisms strung together by filaments (semi-regularly lit roads) and each reaching out in odd finger shapes. I forget what it’s called when white blood cells do that ‘extending a finger to ENGULF YOU’ thing, but that’s what they looked like. I had fun guessing where we were (Spain? France? over the sea?), up until they turned the cabin lights back on full blast and I decided sleep was a better option that getting neck ache from peering through the window. The irony of ‘Bye bye Latehansa’ written in 10ft-high lettering on the side of the very-late plane seemed to elude the announcer advising us to ‘take some time to sit back, relax, and enjoy…a J2O’.

The flight delay meant I missed my Easybus at Stansted, and the driver of the next one would hardly acknowledge my existence, let alone say anything helpful. Fuck you, Easybus driver. National Express is way comfier anyway. (A word of warning too: if you’re thinking of getting the Easybus TO the airport, then make bloody well sure that you’re early – the driver on Tuesday was operating about 10 minutes ahead of schedule and waited for no-one. I had to sprint.)

Oh shit, I appear to be wasting valuable space on my own personal blog talking about, uh, my own personal stuff. Sorry. MUST TRY HARDER.

******

Today I went to Honest Jon’s to buy the new LP, released by the shop’s label, from the Moritz Von Oswald Trio – that’s Moritz, Vladislav Delay and Max Loderbauer of nsi. (I just wrote ‘Mad Loderbauer’…maybe a good alias for a breakcore side-project?) – and it’s very good. It’s called Vertical Ascent and you can get it on LP, CD or mp3s from the Honest Jon’s site. They’ve got a review of it that characteristically says exactly what it should in exactly the right number of words, as well as quoting Ricardo Villalobos calling the album ‘a frequency massage’ – I guess it itches his feeling space. I suspect my hifi isn’t quite up to the task, but it’s doing an alright job I guess. Has anyone seen the trio live and if so what was it like? Fit, I imagine.

I also finally got Marcello Napoletano’s A Prescription Of Love EP and then added the Overyohead EP from Theo Parrish for good measure. We’re going to see him at Plastic People next weekend and it’s Ben Klock at fabric tonight.

Now it’s actually raining properly outside – still no storm, but an improvement – so maybe it’ll be a less sticky walk to the club than expected. ‘Pattern 3′ is good music for rain.

Prins Thomas @ PP

I don’t remember it looking like this…

Prins Thomas played all night long at Plastic People on Friday night. We went for drinks at the Prague bar on the Kingsland Road, then went to the club for around half midnight. Thomas was already in full swing and the place was filling up. My memories of his set in Berlin at Easter are hazy (to the point where I thought it wasn’t him but nd_baumecker who’d played Donna Summer) but I at least remember enjoying it more and for longer than I usually do with these ‘new-disco’ sets (actually, what is a reasonable name I can use for this type of music? I don’t want to say disco, because to me that means something else…and I don’t want to say ‘nu-disco’ because that makes me want to vomit. anyway, you know what I mean, hopefully). I guess my stamina in Berlin might have had something to do with the whole first-time-at-Panoramabar thing, and the whole being-high thing, though I’m not counting the drugs too much because I’ve had trouble with newdisco-fatigue even when, figuratively, flying.

Friday proved that it must instead be something to do with Prins Thomas, because he managed to keep me interested for another 3 hours of music, none of which I’d ever heard before. There was the stuff I expected, and then there was breakneck funk music, some weird kraut-rock epics, some sort of ritual comedy chant, some vicious and raw jack tracks (including one where the beat kept getting confused, making dancing very enjoyable), and, finally at around half past 3, two absolutely blinding tracks: one chicago style with a huge bassline that went a bit cosmic towards the end; and then a huge, pulsing, French house track in the Bangalter mould. Very, very enjoyable. Thomas uses a strange one-ear thing for prefading, which must play havoc with his neck. I hope he does enough stretching either side of a set.

I would have stayed longer but I was getting tired by that point and decided to cut my losses. Plastic People is a good venue, I reckon. The darkness is refreshing (especially compared to places like the Russian Bar where they think nothing of blinding you with a laser thing that splits into about 10,000 miniature dots across the dancefloor…uh no thank you) and the sound is clear, if a bit loud most of the time. I had earplugs in for a lot of Friday night and they worked really well, because the system, although loud, wasn’t distorting. I like that you can go outside and walk around, rather than being penned in (here’s looking at you again, Russian Bar), and the cloakroom lady was generous enough to give me back my bag even though I’d lost my ticket. I guess no-one in their right mind would try and falsely claim a bag ‘with a huge hole in it’… The crowd on Friday was mainly nice, too, except for a few really-drunk-people careering around towards the end. I also noticed someone working a pair of stripey braces – they are so coming back (I think I’ve been saying this for about two years now, but surely it must happen).

******

The earplugs meant that my ears were pretty much like normal on the way home, so I treated myself to the first hour of Prosumer’s set from The Villa in Oslo a month ago. I haven’t heard anything like it and I can only wish I had been there to hear it at the time. I think I’ve tried to talk about control and measuredness (is that a word?) in DJing before, like with Daniel Bell’s Bunker podcast, but this is something else…it’s got all the control and restraint but with added sex and added impetus, so by the time you get to an hour in you’re in serious WOTR-territory. It’s obscene.

(In a good way).

Time Visions

I went to Oxford last night for a small company get together ahead of the large meeting we have organised for early July. It was a chance to test out a few strategies, some tried and tested and some new and exciting. It’s nice to know there are always the stalwarts there to count on, while always keeping in mind that there’s nothing to be lost by trying something new, no matter how offputting it might appear at first glance.

I accidentally played some techno (Clatterbox – who knew?) before trying out some of the records I bought last weekend. My expenses-unpaid excursion to Honest Jon’s had been intended to furnish me with Chicago Skyway’s Bells EP, but instead I came away with a truckload of other business. Chez Damier’s release on Mojuba was the prize purchase and I don’t want to stop listening to ‘Sometimes I Feel Like’ any time soon. I was told it got played three times at the latest Get Perlonized in Panoramabar and I get a bit wobbly just thinking about it. I was dancing round the shop at any rate.

I was also sold on Pile’s Perlipop EP, which has given me all the motivation I need to listen to all the other old Perlon records…’The Spirit’ in particular is beautiful (’try…always try’). Later on I tried to give ‘1 Of Those Days’ a showing but by that point I was experiencing some sort of strange dissociation (must have been that hayfever medication G gave me?) and it sounded really quite unlike what I thought it did. Odd noises on a Thursday night.

Not as odd as Headhunter’s remix on this EP, though, which is quickly becoming my go-to ‘what the fuck’ record. I would try mixing it with the aforementioned Eulberg/Beyer record if I wasn’t too busy mixing that one with Technotronic instead. And that was earlier today. :-/

This is turning into a self-indulgent piece of wank. Hmmm. I can’t really help it though because it’s really fun buying records and playing them to other people. Even when mixing isn’t coming quite as reasonably as you’d hope, and even when a selection that sounds mindblowing in your head turns out to sound absolutely shit out loud, it’s the simple promise inherent in it that keeps it more than worthwhile. That’s why me and E (E and I, G) spent about 3 hours today playing even more records, which led to the revelation of ‘Name It X‘ and ‘School‘. When things go right, it’s pretty fucking amazing.

I didn’t even get round to playing another really good one that I got from the Notting Hill MVE: Salz’s Quattro EP, which has 4 very good tracks on it ranging from a weird skanking piano number, to some proper Maurizio vibes, to another blissed out dub-with-diva-vocals track. Fit.

******

PS that Chez Damier track really is something special…is it the same mix as on the various other releases that list it (Ron Trent, Last Session etc), or is it a new version? It’s so fucking good…and I’ve heard a rumour that a certain KMS 049 may be making an appearance at our July convention as well. One of our employees must have been doing very well for himself.

(I’d put a winking smiley here but I cringed when I thought about it, so I’m not going to).

Dozzy @ Corsica Studios

This weekend has been absolutely brilliant. I’ve been in London for nearly 2 years now and I’m still finding it new and exciting. I know there are several things that I don’t like about being here, but they are – on the whole – outweighed by the things that make this city far better than any other in the UK for me right now. Maybe if I’d lived here all my life I’d think otherwise, but as it is I am enjoying it even more than ever 2 years in.

******

On Friday I walked with a friend from my flat to a pub in the City, which took around an hour, through Russell Square and Holborn and finally along Cheapside to Bank. Walking through Holborn was a bit of a revelation, because tucked in between the main road and its perpendiculars – Gray’s Inn Road, Farringdon Road, and so on – are all sorts of unexpected enclaves of quiet, particularly around Gray’s Inn. It’s as if a Cambridge college had been transplanted into the centre of London, complete with Porters’ Lodge and well-clipped gardens. Walking up to Bank gave me slight flashbacks to when I used to live in Whitechapel, because I remember catching the bus from the City on various evenings. Bank itself is inextricably linked in my mind with an amazing thunderstorm from which I had to take shelter under the big columns and arches. Good times.

After going to the pub there, two of us headed down to the Glad on Lant Street for a few more drinks before the Bleep43 party. We headed down to Corsica Studios at around 11, just in time to hear Donato Dozzy playing some sort of krautrock jam which didn’t really translate over the speakers. At that point the bass was pretty fuzzy and the sound of people talking was overpowering, so I got a bit anxious about the rest of the night. A quick smoke outside sorted me out, though, and by the time we went back in the beats had arrived and the sound improved dramatically as the room filled up. Dozzy played about two records that I recognised, including – totally unexpectedly – No Smoke’s ‘Koro-Koro‘. It was a sign of things to come, or not, because it’s difficult to say that when everything was so unpredictable.

Tripping techno, acid, dub, house moments, and then finally, to round it off, the fattest of basslines and Chicago beats. His mixing was masterful and the music ebbed and flowed all through the set in ways I haven’t really heard before. The atmosphere was great, the sound was great, the people were all having fun and Dozzy himself seemed to be having a really good time. At some point we discovered that Derrick May was there for some reason, and G had her second hug-from-one-of-her-favourite-DJs of the week over by the bar. Dozzy’s set was, in a word, artful.

Omar-S appeared at some point and stood looking quite cool in the DJ booth, but we began wondering how on earth he would follow Dozzy’s set. He kicked off with ‘French Kiss’, which is as good a way as any, but soon the sound got louder and harsher and I started getting a bit run down by it all. During Dozzy I’d been having a great time dancing in the corner near the exit to the smoking area – there was space to move around and the sound was very clear. After Omar-S came on, though, the space seemed to close in a bit and I started feeling a bit smacked round the head. He was playing good tracks – including one with a really fat guitar riff in it – but don’t think I could manage more than about 15 minutes at a time. By about half 4 we decided it was time to cut our losses and head back to Bethnal Green. I felt like I’d had more than enough enjoyment out of the evening by that point…but I wonder if Dozzy had carried on whether I’d still have been going at 6am. Part of me reckons I would have.

We spent the rest of the morning listening to Theo Parrish, Jichael Mackson, Ian Pooley and others, and I spent about 3 hours playing with a toy dog that, while featureless, had bags of personality.

******

On Saturday I got up at about 4pm and sat around listening to Akron/Family before going for a delicious Fish & Chips near my flat. Later we watched Somers Town, which was not only very watchable but also allowed for saying things like ‘THOSE ARE THE MULTICOLOURED TOWER BLOCKS!’ etc etc.

******

Then today I spent one of those blissful, slow-moving Sundays wandering around the place having a really great time. I went to Honest Jon’s and chatted for a long time about all sorts of things (I have a LOT of homework to do), then I walked down to Notting Hill to MVE and finally got a copy of ‘Brenda’s 20$ Dilemma‘, then I walked across to the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, where I was completely underwhelmed by Luke Fowler’s exhibition (there was one good piece, I thought: a video of someone’s council flat in which they had a load of Penguin Classics, which reminded me of home), and then I walked all the way up through the park – in glorious sunshine – up to Marble Arch, before catching the 30 home. The road down from Notting Hill to the Serpentine was called Palace Gardens Terrace and it was obscenely well-to-do. There are some very rich people in this city.

This evening a group of us walked from St. Paul’s to the Royal Festival Hall, before sitting on Jubilee Gardens and watching the sun set. Some wardens came along and said ‘it is illegal to drink alcohol on Jubilee Gardens’ but then went on to say ’so please finish up the bottle you’re drinking now and then we recommend moving to just over there by the river’, which was very nice of them.

Now I’m listening to pirated mp3 of Marcello Napoletano’s ‘A Prescription Of Love‘ because I can’t find anywhere selling it for less than £10. Weekends like this are a hell of a lot of fun, but they sure aren’t cheap.

Round One

Google DJ Qu and you get THE CATMAN OF PARIS. Fit.

Shock, horror, I enjoyed myself (no really!) on Friday night. Even though the sound was amazing, the atmosphere was fantastic, the venue was at just the right capacity and the music was perfect, I still (incredibly) just about managed to crack a smile after 5 hours (count them) of Sud Electronic’s latest party.

Eurgh I don’t even think I can be sarcastic about it.

Anyway, we got to the Shacklewell Arms at about midnight and heard DJ Qu’s remix of ‘No Pressure‘ – I guess as a nod to him being on later. The venue was pretty empty but the disco ball was in full flow (it’s got cool red and blue bits on it) and the smoking area was thankfully far less smokey than last time. I noticed for the first time quite how full of plants it is out there, including a really spiky one that I somehow got a bit too acquainted with.

Lakuti played some great records and the place filled up quickly. I really like her taste in music. There were also horrific visuals of dogs on playing-card clocks (I sometimes wonder if the people who decide on visuals as a hobby are the same people who keep those awful souvenir shops in business on Oxford St/the Royal Mile/any other major city). She finished with ‘I’m Your Brother‘, which didn’t quite sound like I thought it did, maybe because Funktion One speakers weren’t designed with warmth/love in mind. They might look snazzy and sound great most of the time, but they’re not very good at Main Street basslines.

Scott Ferguson started with about 5 minutes of radio tuning, in which time I got totally distracted, ending up sitting outside for the duration of his liveset. Sorry Scott Ferguson :( I made it back in for Steffi’s set, though, and spent the next hour and a half non-stop dancing. She played ‘Raw Cuts #3‘, the KiNK record I really want, some pretty serious techno and a hell of a lot of ridiculous basslines. One sticks in my memory the most, because it kind of exploded after a long build-up, quickly went away again, and then just exploded all over again. Basslines…mmmm. Steffi was very much in control.

I had to have a break from all the exertion (and jaegermeister…) so I missed the beginning of DJ Qu’s set. When I went back in he had already transformed the music into his own trippy, long-form style. I only know a couple of his productions but his DJing reminded me of them a lot – fucked up, disregarding any sense of time passing, very sharp and percussive…early on he played a track that I know from Marcel Fenger’s ssgmix and I was sold. Later there was a ridiculous acid workout, and even a bit of silence before ‘Let Me Show You Love‘ burst out of the speakers. I think the record skipped about 10 times through its duration, but I was still moving to it. DJ Qu had got to me, evidently.

The night finished at about half five – who said it could get light outside?! – and we got the bus back home. Everyone I’d been there with seemed to agree that the atmosphere had been one of the best of the year. There weren’t any revelations, or near-death experiences, or conversations with inanimate objects, but i’m not one to moan, and they’re not really essential to a good party. And it was a good party. Thanks Lerato and the other DJs – bring on the autumn.

Dance With Me

My thoughts at about 8am on Sunday morning turned to moments I’ve had where it’s not enough to just be in a room with amazing music, and it’s not even enough to be kind of moving around to it…there comes a point when you want the music in you, somehow inside you as part of you. It’s happened a few times and it’s definitely tied up with dancing, but there are times when dancing in a conventional sense almost falls short. I had one in Berlin during ‘The Feeling‘ when it was very difficult to even move my legs. Another one at Ricardo last summer during the break in ‘Points‘, when I decided leaning on E would be the safest bet. Derrick May at Glade two years ago was one of the first I’m sure, and then it was probably the swamp we were standing in that kept me upright. I worry sometimes that rather than dancing appreciatively I instead stand there looking a bit ill and a bit disbelieving.

There were a couple of moments during Prosumer’s set on Saturday night too. During ‘I’ll Bass You‘ I think I alternated between dancing and standing around looking dazed. There was a ridiculous drum track that produced another. The rest of the time I just danced because I wanted to and there was enough space to move around. It was fun.

I can’t work out the relation between the kind of dancing that is my way of engaging with music I like quite a bit (i.e. a conscious choice on my part to move) and the kind of dancing which is my involuntary response to something that’s just that amazing. I expect one of them’s a lot sillier to look at than the other. Surely that’s one of the ultimate prizes for a DJ, though: to get a gut reaction to what they’re playing that bypasses any filters or hang-ups and lets people enjoy the movement in the moment. And as a listener and a dancer there’s nothing more pleasurable than being made to move in ways you wouldn’t normally think about. It’s a lot of fun.

Every time I’ve read about ‘proper’ dancers I’ve wished I could see them doing it. Apparently DJ Qu’s a house dancer, and he was there on Saturday, but I only saw him do a brief shuffle near the DJ booth early on. I guess the atmosphere wasn’t really there. I don’t know how long Cable can keep going if a night like this brings in hardly any people – they didn’t even run the second room.

By the end of the night there can’t have been more than 50 people left, but those still there were all dancing around and smiling. I thought the atmosphere was great at that point even though the room was mostly empty and the lights were coming on. G did some amazing spotlight dancing and someone even asked me – rather hopefully I thought – where the afterparty would be. Earlier it had been a bit busier but also a bit less pleasant, since most of the crowd seemed pretty drunk and weren’t dancing too much. Soundstream played loads of his own tracks and remixes, mixed in with classics. Long mixes, cheeky EQing, and I wonder if it was on purpose when he flatlined the bass at the beginning of KMS 049? – there was a sideways grin… ‘Dance With Me‘ is still getting better – I guess, sma, it might just be a future classic :P. I think from running into the room during his ‘Free For All‘ remix I knew I was going to enjoy myself.

Prosumer’s set was full of huge basslines and mad percussion that made me play air-drums every few minutes. ‘Fiesta‘ was an absolute revelation, given that I’d listened to it once at home and thought nothing much more of it. This is what happens when you have a good soundsystem that is pitched just right: you get a deep, flexible bassline like that and it turns you inside out, no earplugs necessary. You get stereo, like in that ridiculous drum track, and in another that had faint high-pitched vocals appearing in the left-hand speaker as it was mixed out. You can hear every moan and squeal in whichever over-the-top sex-noise track he decides to play that night ;) I’m waiting for ‘Touch Me‘… one day.

When we got back to Bethnal Green at about 6am we stayed up listening to Bruno Pronsato, Daniel Bell and then a bit of Ricardo. On the way to my own home at 9am I had a weird moment at the top of an escalator in the tube station – it seemed like the edge of the world. 4 hours of sleep and two boiled eggs later I was off to Cassy. After a night like Saturday, maybe it’s not surprising I felt so hard done by at secretsundaze?

You Ain’t Dancin

The quality of this youtube screengrab is marginally better than the sound quality at secretsundaze yesterday.

I’m doing this backwards so that I can improve my mood as I go along, rather than having to re-live the utter disappointment of secretsundaze that finished my weekend. Friday and Saturday can wait until later.

Comments on the RA thread before this weekend’s secretsundaze party included such gems as:

love village underground as a venue!

SS at Village Underground in 2006 was probably one of the best parties I’ve ever been to….don’t even have to worry about the weather either! ;-)

and from Giles Smith, resident DJ:

Its a great venue and many in 2006 said it was one of the their favourite.

I wonder what was different about 2006 compared to 2009, because I only lasted about half an hour at yesterday’s party before having to leave. Yes, the venue is great in terms of space, foliage, skylights and, uh, brickwork. But no, the venue isn’t great in terms of being able to hear a kick drum, or a tune, or anything at all really.

After about 10 minutes I was getting good at imagining what Giles Smith should have sounded like, using brainpower alone to strip away all the fuzz from the bass (any actual kick drums were merely implied by the fuzz waxing and waning every beat) and to sharpen up any melodies that echoed back from the stark, flat walls. Whether I was making up the right melodies, though, is anyone’s guess. After 15 minutes my ears were hurting so I put earplugs in. 10 minutes later they were hurting again, even with earplugs in, and I decided to leave.

It was tipping it down. The battle between getting wet and getting further ear damage was won by getting wet. I don’t generally like paying to be punched round the ears repeatedly for half an hour.

After a couple of hours in a nearby pub, me and E gave it another go just in case Cassy was any better (yes this sounds silly given her tendency to turn it up WAY TOO LOUD). Apparently her plane was delayed and I really didn’t want to stay, so we buggered off to have a meal instead. This was the fourth (?) attempt at seeing Cassy properly and once again I failed. Maybe it’ll never happen.

Village Underground would make a great venue for installation art, or a market sale. You could play a good game of squash in there. But stick two huge Funktion One stacks at one end and expect it to sound good, and you’ll end up just hurting people (literally, hurting them). And yet everyone else there seemed to be loving it…

I Feel The Heat