A trippier shade of house

For your listening pleasure, my latest mix to listen to or download:

Sick Day Mix Day 2010-11-30 by Dr Tad

Tracklist

Convertion - Sweet Thing

Prins Thomas - Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky)

Ray Mang - Inner City Disco

Young & Company - Legs & Co - Pete Herbert & Dicky Trisco Edit

Al Usher - Gnanfou - Swag's Gnanby Dub

Talking Heads - Heads - Cosmic Boogie Edit

Justin Vandervolgen - Sheebooyah

Ray Mang - Letcha Body Go

Hunee - Bobo

Kink & Neville Watson - Metropole

Neville Watson - Let Me Go

Sister Sledge - Lost In Music - The Revenge Rework

Justin Vandervolgen - The Clapping Song

Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam - Steve Lawler Remix

Sister Sledge - You Fooled Around

Night and day

OR: THE SONAR DIARIES, PART FOUR

Night


So for those who have never been, what is Sonar By Night really like? Well, if you can imagine one of those massive aircraft-hangar-like exhibition halls where they hold car shows and the like, located in the 'burbs, filled with tens of thousands of wasted youth, with drink queues a mile long (first for your drink ticket and then the drink itself), bumper cars and food stalls, and a cheesy rave atmosphere.... well, there you have it. Except the quality of the music is always superior—straddling the cool end of current pop and EDM tastes as well as delving into the more experimental and obscure.


But like any festival, there is always too much time spent facing crowd crush to get between stages (luckily only three this year, whereas I seem to recall there were four when I first went), and making choices that mean you get to sample more than experience those acts you want to see. So here is my blow-by-blow account of the night I had, but there were so many other nights that could've been had.


First up I caught the end of Hot Chip, pushing their cheery pop-electronica sound in a slightly tougher and more dance-y direction than I was expecting. Following that I scooted over to check out Dubstep-meets-tech hero of the day, Joy Orbison. Tight mixing and interesting sounds, but with an MC who seemed to be unable to move much beyond "Hello Barcelona" and "This is Joy Orbison" in his vocal stylings.


Then it was off to catch the first bit of LCD Soundsystem's set. James Murphy looked resplendently shaggy in a creased white suit and belted out favourites from Sound Of Silver and the new album like "Us v Them" and "Drunk Girls". As I'm seeing LCD soon in Sydney I took the opportunity to check out the return of Richie Hawtin's alter-ego Plastikman. Now this was clearly one for the fans, accompanied not just by a fantastic light show but a dedicated iPhone app that streamed track names and times and even BPMs! It was solid, dependable acid house and techno, but I've gotta say it washed over me a bit. As someone once sang, "Is That All There Is?"


Then it was off to see Barcelona's John Talabot (not his real name—does anyone know who he really is?), whose sound would probably best be described as intense, trippy and distorted nu-disco. While he was only holding a relatively small crowd (a couple of thousand at most) this was interesting, emotive and trance-inducing DJing. Even when big, obvious disco samples rose in the mix there was a modern, techy edginess to them that was truly exciting (and groovy at the same time).


Back to see Dixon (of Berlin's Innervisions label), I was very happy to see he was pushing the darker edge of his sound, with big tribal beats and techno influences—all very appropriate for 3.30am. And a great lead-in to Booka Shade, also playing darker and less euphoric than when I've seen them before.


But as 5.30am rolled around it was time to stumble out the door and look for the SonarPro bus promised to those of us with "accreditations". But where the hell was it? Happily I took Option B and entered the very modern Metro station Europa I Fira. It was a fitting and humorous end to the night as many hundreds of truly wasted dancers sitting on the platform heard the first train of the morning approach, getting their feet and cheering as if they had just been hit with the end of a massive breakdown in the middle of an epic DJ set.

Day

After an incredibly heavy six-hour sleep (could the jetlag finally be banished?) I headed out for the CCCB to catch the one last Sonar By Day act I wanted to see—Detroit's living legend Moodyman. Now this guy is an acquired taste. Last time I saw him, he performed behind a white sheet for the first 30 minutes of his set. This time it was a white towel draped over his head (pictured above). Characteristically, this was a performance that went well beyond playing records, with Mr Dixon Jr. engaging in between-track and during-track patter, much of it hilarious.


He started with a story about how the "lady at Customs" had looked at his records and said they were the biggest CDs she'd ever seen—and what sort of CD player does he own that plays them? And as if to prove the point one of the SL-1200s he was to play on had a fault and needed to be replaced, delaying the show by 10 minutes.


Now, trainspotting is not something you get to do at a Moodyman gig*; he tells you what most of the tracks are. And this being a daytime Sonar set, he stuck with a classic sound dominated by soul, funk, disco, new wave and some hip-hop. There were De La Soul and J Dilla, Fred Wesley, James Brown, BT Express, The Clash, The Whispers and even Nitzer Ebb. Finally he had to be prised off the decks after his all-too-brief 90 minutes, accompanied by the sunshine breaking through after a downpour in the early stages of his set. For all the tired, post-Sonar By Night refugees, this was the perfect metaphor for the way he'd lifted our spirits on a steamy afternoon.


*That said, he played the original track that Daniel Wang's "Free Lovin" is based on—with the weird Afro instrumentation—or maybe it was Danny's own version. Can anybody help?

The sun is shining...

OR: THE SONAR DIARIES, PART THREE

The jetlag, the bloody jetlag. When you stay up to after 5am after virtually no sleep for 28 hours, surely the payoff is a long snooze. But, no, after four hours was all I managed and so I headed off for a late breakfast at Mercat de Santa Caterina and downed two cafes con leche, quickly recalling just how good the coffee is in Spain.

Then it was Sonar By Day, meeting up with my friends Ant and Lisa and their entourage, sitting in the lovely summer sunshine. Sonar By Day is always a mixed bag: art exhibitions, movies, technology demonstrations and musical acts. This year's robot exhibit was very fun, and I saw an American musician knock out a terrific 30 minute acid house set simply by twiddling the nobs on three little boxes produced by Elektron.

I found both DJ Annie Hall and up & comers Nedry a little flaccid for my tastes, and the dubstep oriented goings on in the Red Bull Music Academy also not my scene. But the standout for my brief day at the CCCB (apart from the great Sangria) was Aufgang. This French trio has a German name—roughly translated as "emerging" or "rising"—and their energetic and supremely tight use of their two grand pianos and one drum kit is a sight to behold. Their sound is somewhere between classical music, techno, sweet Air-like pop and storming piano house, but none of those descriptions do them justice. And they've already proven their coolness by getting Barcelona nu-disco wunderkind John Talabot to remix their track "Channel 7". Check them out!

PS Just a little aside, on the way out I watched Booka Shade getting interviewed at the Sonar radio tent and finally got to do the fanboy thing and tell them how great they are. A true groupie moment, and they are such sweet, funny guys.

Desolat(ion)

OR: THE SONAR DIARIES, PART TWO

The odd thing about clubbing in Spain is that the clubs tend to be located in the most out-of-the-way spots you can imagine. So, por ejemplo, the techno generation would often drive hundreds of kilometres to massive constructions named for how many km they were located down a particular inter-city highway. Needless to say, the road toll was uncomfortably high at the end of weekend-long benders. Then there is the Monegros Festival, an annual pilgrimage to a remote mountainous region in northern Spain, and featuring some of the biggest names in techno.

It's true even in big cities like Barcelona, and last night I went to the opening of a new venue called Ghoa Beach Club, located just outside the city outskirts on a beach adjacent to Parc Litoral. The occasion was the Desolat off-Sonar label party and the headliners were very impressive indeed: Martin Buttrich, Loco Dice and Marco Carola. It took our taxi driver some time to find the damn place: even the street was not in his navigator device and we bumped into several other partygoers on the way, all searching for the mysterious venue.

Finally we arrived to find an outrageous episode of crowd crush occurring at the front door, with hundred heaving back and forth, some breaking into boos and hisses. The Spanish know how to queue politely. Not.

I had a ticket, but Dave and Andy didn't and we almost turned back but then realised that we would be let in... and when we got inside there was only a small crowd and the whole incident had been about poor organisation. In fact, there were more hangers-on in the spacious DJ area than on the dancefloor at that point, although that would rapidly change as the large space—replete with a massive resort-like pool (briefly used by some brave punters before they were dragged out) and multiple bars—filled comfortably.

Sadly, Buttrich finished his performance just as we managed to get inside and we were treated to an extended warm-up by Davide Squillace. It was a well thought-out and prolonged warm-up set of generic tech-house that helped set the scene but lacked anything really special. But it gave us time to imbibe overpriced mixed drinks (even small bottles of water were 4 Euro) and admire the amazing ability of the crowd to smoke so heavily in the open-air venue that the cigarette fumes were at times almost overpowering.

With Loco Dice on, the music continued in a locked groove, techy fashion without many highlights. But as Andy observed, Dice's drugs must have kicked in at the 30 minute mark and suddenly it was all EQs, filters and effects. He was soon joined by Carola and they pumped out music that would have been positively banal if it wasn't for their ability to play with every effect parameter on a Pioneer DJM-800 mixer and their undoubted ability to read the crowd. It's not that the music was bad, and it was certainly danceable (I managed a lot of grooving despite being stupidly overtired and running on Red Bull), but it was just that big modern European techno sound, pioneered at clubs like DC-10 in Ibiza. In some ways it was musically akin to what Luciano was playing a couple of years ago, but delivered without his panache and talent for layering unexpected elements into the sound.

At just before 5am Andy and I called it a day, just in time to see the first tram of the day arrive at its stop and to catch a taxi with a nice Indian driver who we talked sport with (football and cricket)—leaving Dave to power on for at least another couple of hours.

For a long time in Sydney, Lost Baggage ruled the roost as the premier techno night, pulling high-visibility European DJs who play very much in the style we saw at Ghoa. This party was like the super-professional, highly competent and more pleasantly populated version of a Lost Baggage night, run at a pretty venue with an excited crowd. This is Euro techno clubbing—it's fun but it really may just be the funky house of its generation.

Lost my dog (and my sleep) in Barcelona

OR: THE SONAR DIARIES, PART ONE

Here I am, baby... but only just in one piece. That jetlag is a killer!

I arrived in Barcelona (which has a very new, very big and very sexy airport) on Thursday afternoon local time in a very underslept state after over 24 hours in transit and went straight to get my SonarPro media accreditation for this here blog. With suitcase in tow, I negotiated some side streets between the Aerobus stop and the place the take your photo and give you your pass, this year in an old convent building that has been subsumed by the cultural centre, the CCCB, where Sonar By Day is held. Only got lost once on the way!

Whilst waiting in an irritatingly long queue I was shouted to a hawked beer by the crew of UK deep house label Lost My Dog and got into conversation about the state of the UK scene with label honcho and DJ, Pete Dafeet. Further to my controversial post on the oversaturation of festivals in Australia, Pete indicated that the once-bloated club scene in the UK (and especially London) was fast mutating into a more fragmented space with much more modest and underground-oriented nights pulling punters. Most shocking of the big club failures was London's Matter, which had essentially collapsed, taking the owners of still-successful superclub Fabric with it (they had apparently put Fabric up as the guarantee against which Matter was financed). So Fabric, still pulling in the masses, is up for sale. Erk!

Pete has an interesting off-Sonar party on Sunday, with US house legend Joshua Iz at the top of the roster. It seems that Lost My Dog is referencing the classic deep house stylee that first got me hooked on dance music just over a decade ago. I will try to review some of their output here in the near future.

Then it was a 30 minute sojourn inside Sonar By Day and catching a sneak of Pete Tong in the main outdoor area. The BBC Radio One institution was playing a more indie/underground selection among older favourites (I think the Henrik Schwarz version of MJ's "Wanna Be Startin Somethin" was there!), but he still seemed an odd inclusion in the normally overly cool selection.

But then it was off to stay at my long-time Barcelona friend Gemma's place, meeting her flatmate, taking a much-needed 20 minute powe rnap and going for a cool 4 euro Mojito & tapa deal at a local bar with her and our mutual friend Luke—let me say the Patatas Bravas was superb, and who could argue at prices like that?

Then off to Gracia for dinner at a very traditional local Catalan restaurant, where perhaps the meat was too much (Luke ordered a 500g steak after our entree... and I had an amazing smaller steak with foie gras sauce, which I know is un-PC but was spectacular).

Finally, it was time to dash across town to meet Dave and Andy and head off to my first off-Sonar event at the newly constructed and much-hyped Ghoa Beach Club. Stay tuned for the skinny on that...