Music « decoded

July 21, 2007

Destino…

Filed under: Art,Clubbing & Gigs,Travel — decoded_ @ 8:31 pm

Destino

Mornin’ It’s our last full day in London today. We fly back to Sydney tomorrow around noon, sad our holiday is over, it’s been fantastic.

We ventured into the chaos that is central London yesterday, travelling on the train from Lee, near Greenwich, where we’re staying. We took a double-decker bus ride, not really having a plan of where to go/what to see, and wanting to escape the insane amount of people in Victoria Station and ended up near the Tate Modern art gallery/museum. We were delighted to find that a Salvidor Dali exhibition ‘Dali & Film’ is currently showing.

‘Dali & Film’ was an excellent exhibition, fantastic to finally see many of his most well known surrealism pieces, like the “Persistence Of Memory” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory the one with the melting clocks. It was really small though, it’s only about 30cm across. I love how the closer you get to his works, the more things you see, so detailed! Many of these works were not at his museum in Figueres Spain at the time we visited, although that museum was amazing regardless. The exhibition at the Tate Modern also had a number of films that Salvidor Dali was involved with, like the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’. We saw the most amazing short animated film, called “Destino” a creation by Dali & Walt Disney animator John Hench, made in 1946. The project was abandoned as it was too controversial at the time, and has only recently been digitally brought to life. It was like a living Salvidor Dali painting, very surreal, amazing! There are some YouTube clips of it if you hunt around. We’ve seen some amazing art on our travels.

We had a fantastic time last night, catching up with a big group of old and new friends at an excellent Tapas restaurant in Islington. A really fun night! Much love to you all, was fantastic to see you all.

We also had a few journeys on the tube, packed in like sardines, sweating it up. Heavy rains and flooding caused chaos on the tube lines yesterday. I think we might try check out the Portabello Road Market, or have a look around Covent Garden/Soho, and Oxford Street today.

We’re off to see British Murder Boys [live] at Fabric tonight. We’ve been invited out prior to dinner with… 🙂 as well, excited. Also playing are… Ricardo Villalobos, Craig Richards, Omar S, Monolake [live], Vex’d [live] and more… across 3 rooms.

Much love and huge thanks to our hosts during our travels… Andreas & Iris, Gino & Carmen, Bec & Greg, Sandra & Mal. Also sending out much love to all our friends around Europe and UK. We’ll see all you Aussie friends down under very soon…

Love D & J

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July 16, 2007

Melt, Tresor and more…

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Travel — decoded_ @ 8:53 am

Sorry this will be quick, only got 20 mins Internet time.

Melt Festival

Melt Festival 2007… OMG! What an amazing location for a rave/dance party, out in the middle of nowhere, amongst a heap of gigantic, massive, old, rusting, industrial, mining, digging, steal processing machines, all lit up with fantastic lighting, excellent sound and lighting everywhere, market stalls, diverse music line-up, lots of food and snacks, and cheap drinks. We stayed in a nice little German country hotel, and managed to get our own personal taxi driver Frank to take us to/from Melt, and to/from the hotel, and train station, he spoke no English, and we only know about 20 words of German, but he gave us his mobile number, and we managed to organise pick up and drop off times. The area where people camp for the Melt Festival must be at least a 6km walk away from the event, 1000s of tents! We passed it by on the way to the entrance.

Check out the location for Melt!

Ferropolis

http://www.ferropolis-online.de/ferropolis.html

Awesome music from Onur Ozer Vs Mathias Kadan, Troy Pierce, Alex Smoke [live] (I had a nice chat with him before he played, great guy!), Tiefschwarz, and Richie Hawtin as the sun came up. Autechre [live] were very abstract, and very drum and bass, and played in the dark, requesting all the lighting off, sorry couldn’t get any photos of them. Magda was all throbby bass and bleeps, not very interesting sounds. It was a very cool event, so much better than Awakenings, and we thought that was fantastic.

Worst DJ set award of our travels so far goes to… DJ Koze at Melt, who in the 15 mins we watched him… made a mess of each mix, took the needle off the wrong (playing) record twice, attempted to cover it with bad skipping needle/record scratching, and track flow was all over the place, quite dull sounds sorry to say.

Anyway… We decided to only do day 1 of Melt, and came back to Berlin yesterday to go to the new Tresor, where we saw Suzi Wong, Stewart Walker [live], and… Daniel Bell on the Batterieraum Floor, as well as Liquid and Dry in the damp bunker/underground Tresor floor.

New Tresor club inside this building

Tresor is inside that huge industrial building, but with the renovations/fit out they have done, it feels like they’re using only about an 1/8th of it. Really dissapointed with the sound there. Crowd was very mixed, ethnic, lots of young excited kids who looked like they were hearing techno for the first time, we felt like we were in Sydney’s Gas or Home clubs. Enjoyed the music though. Berghain is a much better venue for that huge industrial building vibe. The new Tresor would have been so much better if they didn’t do anything to the building! How it was originally…

Original inside of buidling Tresor club is now in

How it looks now…

Batterieraum Floor – Pics
Tresor Floor – Pics

Around 4am, we went to a club called Maria, and saw Dan Curtin playing… to about 30 people (this club got raided by Police the weekend before, so maybe that’s why it was empty). We stayed for an hour and a bit, and got to meet and chat with… Jeremy P. Caulfield, we were dissapointed he had alraedy played, but… he’s coming to play Sydney later this year, woo! Great sounds from Dan Curtin, nice tough minimal and techno, great mixing and track flow.

Around 5.30am, we went to Berghain/Panorama Bar for the last time of our Holiday and saw… Ben Klock, Paul Brtschitsch [live], and then Len Faki Vs Ben Klock playing in Berghain, and upstairs in Panorama Bar… Jesse Rose. Such a fantastic vibe in this place, awesome venue, the sound systems are amazing. Lots of man love in that place, we’ve been warned, don’t venture into the dark corners/rooms you may see some very strange err…acts. The boys in Berghain banged it out with some hard techno sounds, and cleared the floor in no time at all. Upstairs in Panorama Bar Jesse Rose had a packed room jumping to his electro-house/minimal-tech-house sounds, a bit too cheesy for us at times.

Knut

Arghh, Internet time is running out… We went to the Zoo today and saw Knut, such a cute playful little polar bear. Berlin Zoo is awesome, very green, lots of shade, and you can get a lot closer to the animals than any other Zoo I’ve been to. Heaps of baby animals too! Cute!

Well… we’re off to UK tomorrow to catch up with family and friends… Hope everyone is well, thanks for reading and all your comments. Can’t believe this is the last week of our holiday.

Oh and sorry for complaining about the wet and cold, it was actually a hot 35-37 degrees in Berlin our last 2 days there.

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June 25, 2007

Grie Soss

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Food,Travel — decoded_ @ 12:32 am

Traditional Frankfurt-Am-Main food

Guten Tag! Last day in Frankfurt for a week or so. I forgot to mention we went and saw the movie “Oceans 13” at the only English (Original Version) cinema here the other day, we really enjoyed it, very snappy, slick, funny movie, loved the out of character banter between Brad and George near the end of the film.

Last night, Saturday night, before heading off to the Robert-Johnson club, Andreas took us out for some traditional Frankfurt drinks and food.

We went to a very well known, old, original Äpplerkneipen (apple wine inn) called Zum Gemalten Haus, over the river Main in Sachsenhausen, a quite trendy part of Frankfurt.

As you would expect, we drank a lof of Frankfurt’s national drink, Ebbelwei (apple wine), which is poured from a huge grey ceramic jug called a Bembel, and then drunk from a Gerippte, a special apple wine glass. We drank it mixed with sparkling mineral water, as it can be a bit sour and acidic drunk pure. It goes down as quick/easy as sparkling apple juice and you get drunk very easily.

For eating we had some Frankfurt specialties, I had a huge thick pork chop (salted and boiled) served on top of sauerkraut, with boiled potatoes, usually you have mashed potato, but they had run out, as we were eating late at 11pm (just after sunset!). Joanne had a traditional large Frankfurt beef sausage, also served with sauerkraut and potatoes. Andreas (who is vegetarian) had the traditional Frankfurt eggs with green sauce, served with boiled potatoes. The eggs are hard boiled and sliced, and the green sauce, Grie Soss, is a thick, creamy sauce, always made from the same seven herbs; parsley, pimpernel, chives, water-cress, chervil, garden sorrel and borage. Much eating and drinking, we rolled out of there, and then headed to the much hyped Robert-Johnson club in Offenbach.

On arriving and walking upstairs, once inside my first thought was… This is it? This is a club? It’s a little room with white walls. It looks like an art space, with make-shift bar and DJ console. It’s small, capacity 250 people. A couple of coloured neon tubes are the only lighting. It’s very loud in there for such a small space, using 6 large speakers suspended from the ceiling, 3 on each side of the dance space. There’s benches all around the walls to sit on. There is also a balcony outside, looking over the river. Lots of smokers in this club, all ignoring the ‘thank you for not smoking’ signs. We saw one guy wearing a t-shirt with “I Love Myself” written on it, which err… said lots about the type of crowd, very different to the Cocoon crowd.

We had to ask the DJs who was playing. I think I may have asked DJ Ata the guy who runs Playhouse/Robert-Johnson. It was DJ Stephen Kürtz (sp?) from Frankfurt who warmed up with some nice deep-tech-house and minimal sounds. He was followed by the main act, two guys playing back to back, known as Optimo. Google tells me they are DJ’s JD Twitch and JG Wilkes from UK/Glasgow. They played a lot of funky, chunky house, electro-house and old-school analogue/acid techno, a few old classics. They got the room jumping. It was loud/busy music, and I wasn’t really in the mood for it, struggling to stay awake, too much apple wine earlier.

Their set was split up with a live set from Max Mohr, a Playhouse artist. He performed on a small stage opposite the DJ console. Another Apple laptop, Ableton Live live set. His music was ok, simplistic tech-house/minimal stuff. It was really obvious he was just turning clips on/off in Ableton Live and not doing anything else.

We left around 3am, which seemed to be the time a lot more people were arriving. Andreas tells us the club sometimes keeps pumping until 10am the next day! It would be a sweat-box! I really don’t understand the attraction of partying that long in a small club.It was cool to check out Robert-Johnson, but wasn’t anything at all like we were expecting.

On the move… We’re off to Paris tomorrow for 4 or 5 days, so this is the probably the last long post for a while. We’ll be back to using Internet Cafes again. It’s been handy having a laptop and Internet to use whilst here in Frankfurt… We may go check out John Acquaviva at Rex-Club in Paris whilst we’re there.

Thanks for reading… Speak to you again from Paris, au revoir.

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June 24, 2007

Köln & Cocoon

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Music,Travel — decoded_ @ 1:29 am

I Love Köln

This morning I’m suffering the effects of too much Red Bull and Jägermeister at Cocoon during the early hours of this morning, can you say dehydrated?

I hope you’re all well and all is going well. We’re doing great, enjoying our time in Frankfurt muchly. The weather has turned though, it’s been cold, wet and windy the past couple of days with many isolated thunderstorms. Nowhere near as cold, wet and windy as we’ve heard Sydney has been! We’re keeping tabs on home via SMH too. Great to hear Sydney’s water supply has had a boost though.

We had a busy day yesterday. Joanne and I did a day trip to Köln (Cologne), catching an ICE (Inter-City Express) fast train there and back, 1 hr 15 mins each way, wow, they really go very fast!

Köln was great. It’s a lot bigger city than Frankfurt. We visited the huge Köln Dom Cathedral, where I climbed the 500+ narrow spiraling steps up to the highest point, 153m, and back down again. Awesome views of Köln from up there.

We also visited the Lindt Chocolate Museum. Joanne loved that, especially the large chocolate shop at the end, with 1000’s of different types of chocolates to buy. I had to drag her out of there, as she did me at Kompakt Records.

Museum Ludwig was excellent, lots of pop art, minimal art, and surrealism paintings and installations. Some really abstract stuff there, fantastic works by Roy Litchenstein, Andy Warhol, Max Earnst, Salvidor Dali, Pablo Piccasso and more.

Being into techno a visit to Köln must also include a visit to Kompakt Records HQ. It’s quite far from centre/main shops area of Köln. It’s a nice, large spacious shop, heaps of vinyl as you would expect, but lots of CDs too, everything sorted mostly by label, a few specific artist sections. Lots of label’s back catalogue vinyl, and it’s all techno/tech-house. I found a few old techno things I had been hunting for in years gone by, but they looked in second hand condition, and I really don’t have the same burning desire for them anymore. I’d hate to think how much money I would have spent there, having visited during the peak of my vinyl buying addiction 5-7 years ago. I couldn’t visit without at least buying something though, so I picked up the new Johnny Future out on Perfect World 03 picture disc 12″ (mastered and cut by Andreas). Joanne bought a great DVD about Köln’s techno scene, artists, labels etc.

I liked Köln, would be cool to spend a few days there next time. Cool shops in Köln. We discovered a massive Lego shop, where you can even buy every individual Lego brick/part if you want… I could only dream of that possibility as a kid!

There is so much more choice/stock/brands in all the shops here in Europe, it’s really quite overwhelming, a head-spin! The amount of different alcohol available in all sorts of shops here is amazing too, so cheap!

Cocoon Club - Frankfurt-Am-Main

Cocoon Club…

After returning from Köln, we rested our sore feet, had some home cooked pasta, took a nap, woke up, showered and freshened up, and around midnight Andreas picked us up and zoomed us off to Cocoon Club near Offenbäch. We went via Club Monza in Frankfurt city hoping to also see Matthias Tanzmann play prior, but he wasn’t arriving/playing till very late, and was yet to submit the guest-list we were on. Access denied, so on to Cocoon…

We were really lucky to be able to see Frankfurt legend, and all things Cocoon, main man Sven Väth (pronounced Swen Faid) DJing for us in his own club.

Cocoon is a really impressive nightclub, probably the coolest club I’ve ever been in. It’s like being inside an alien space ship.

The club is the ground floor level of a boring multi level office building. Inside it’s a large rectangular space and within that is an oval (pod/cocoon) shaped area as the main room, separated/surrounded by white honey-comb walls. It’s all organic shapes/curves and alien… decor, forms/shapes, displays, pulsing lights, and projections everywhere (and I mean everywhere!). Every Sci-Fi fan’s dream come true! It sounds tacky, but it’s far from it. Someone has watched a lot of great Sci-Fi movies to put that club together! There are cool little green lit pods for groups to sit in around the walls. The outer spaces have lots of areas to sit and chill, there are large, clean, modern toilets, an all night hot food bar, a couple of restaurants (for earlier in the night), another (more chill) dance area, and a Cocoon merchandise shop. Lots of bars to get drinks from everywhere too. Great air-conditioning, It’s the perfect club, nothing to complain about! The main dance floor area consists of organic shapped multi-level spaces to dance on, there are also a couple of podiums with strangely dressed performers ‘doing their thang’ on them. The DJ booth is in this elevated white pod above the dance floor, branching out of one wall. It looks like the command centre of an alien space ship inside, with all the lighting, projection, and DJing gear inside. We got VIP wrist straps and spent a little time in there, watching Sven up close, very cool. There are huge speaker stacks suspended from the ceiling all round, and heaps of bass you can feel from the floor. It’s loud! The intelligent lighting is full on, very disorientating (in a good way). They also have a couple of those Ibizia super-club style smoke machines in the ceiling, that pump out a massive high pressured blast of freezing, ice cold, thick, white smoke, with a loud whoosh (timed to the music), quite a shock when they go off, they fill the club with smoke instantly, you can’t see your hand infront of your face! but then seconds later all smoke has vanished. They always bring a big cheer, and they don’t use them very often, which keeps them exciting. It’s a really unique feeling to experience, makes you tingle with cold for a few seconds.

Music?

Sven played a mixed up range of techno styles/sounds, quite varied intensities from track to track, some harder techno, some electro-house, some chunky house, some minimal, some trance-ish stuff, even a breaks track. I knew a few tracks, but didn’t know a lot of what he played, either did Andreas. I surprisingly liked pretty much everything he played, some really nice tracks. His mixing was super tight, and he’s fun to watch, he’s all about the vinyl, always waving records around, they’re a big part of his performance, he refuses to go digital.

We also got to see… Sleeparchive perform live

Roger behing his laptop was joined on stage by DJ Pete (Hardwax Berlin) helping out with knob twiddling, and live 909 jamming (Jeff Mills style; he was even wearing an Axis T-Shirt). Lots of simplistic 909, 808, RZ-1 drum patterns, static/noise loops, reverb washes, bleeps and not much else, apart from the odd repeated vocal phrase occasionaly, for an hour and a bit. It’s cool, but so simplistic, minimal, rigid, and lacking in any kind of melodic data that it cleared a large number of people from the dance-floor/club. Joanne had a chat with them after whilst we were in the DJ booth, doing the VIP thang. Sven played before/after them.

Crowd is really mixed, lots of shirts mixed with lots of clubbers, lots of different social groups, quite a range of ages too. It’s quite a commercial club, but still has an underground feel for us. It was funny seeing Sven’s mum doing the ‘hands in the air’ at the front of the DJ booth for a while earlier on, which Andreas pointed out to us. There was a really good friendly vibe in the club I thought, it really lifted you up and put you in a good mood, or maybe it was all those drinks I had! Lots of people dancing, but still with space to groove as well. The club probably holds around 1500 people, there was probably half that there I guess. We left around 5am, had it not been overcast and raining it would have been full sunlight.

We’re having another chill day today, then we’re heading off to the Robert-Johnson club with Andreas tonight, no idea who is playing, as they don’t advertise it, will let you know who we saw tomorrow…

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June 16, 2007

Sore feet! Steps, steps and more steps…

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Music,Travel — decoded_ @ 11:56 pm

I forgot to mention we flew right over Ayers Rock on our way out of Australia, and the captain pointed it out for all to see, looked amazing.

We´ve been so busy here in Barcelona, this place is crazy! We´re having so much fun, have not had a chance to Internet/Blog much at all.

This is going to be a bit rushed, so apologies for gramer, and spelling errors. I´ll fix-edit this all later, and add more detail.

We´re staying in/on La Ramblas in a great little place, right opposite the big La Boqueria St.Josep Mercat, a huge fresh food market, with the most amazingly fresh seafood, meats, fruits and vegetables, cheeses and gourmet foods. We´ve been eating a lot of fruit, bread and slices of cured ham, as well as tapes/tapas, paella and glasses of sangria, have found some great little places off-away from La Ramblas.

Over the last few days we´ve been doing a lot of site-seeing. We went to Gaudi´s ‘Park Guell’, the amazing ‘Sagrada Familia’, the ubercoolishe ‘Pavello Mies van der Rohe’ pavillion, and we went on a day tour to North Catalunya, which had a walking tour of 2000 year old Girona, and then onto Dali´s city Figueres, visiting the ´Teatre Musea Dali´ the Salvidor Dali museum, which was fantastic. Taking lots of photos. Barcelona is an amazing city! Really enjoying this.

Sonar 2007

The music…

Went to the first day of Sonar, and saw James Holden play, lots of ´My Bloody Valentine´ type sounds, drones, ambient soundscapes with glitchy beats. Sonar by day is nothing like I imagined, nowhere near as big, but still very cool/happening, reminds me of the Freaky Loops parties in Sydney in size, numbers, vibe. The modern art gallery spaces in the venus are fantastic. It´s all very well organised, quite an older crowd too, which is great. We bought a heap of Sonar merchandise, cool little bags and t’shirts.

At night we went to the Raum Player festival, which was about 15 minutes out of the city, and 3 small tents close to the water in an industrial/dockland area, close to the Park Del Forum. We saw Audiojack and Matt John (advertised as live but was only DJing) and possibly Glimpse, Herve AK, and Berg Nixon/Ryan Crosson for a bit. Hard to tell who is playing, not knowing what these people look like, and time-tables not being stuck to, because of technical troubles. Great to see Matt John, but the party was pretty average, maybe 500 people.

Went to the first Sonar by night, HUGE!!! imagine the biggest aircraft hangers you can then double that, tripple even. We missed Beastie Boys (as we were at Raum Player), but arrived to see Narod Niki… 8 guys on stage with a heap of Apple laptops, and various music gadgets-units all jamming away together, featuring Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Luciano, Zip, two Rhythm & Sound Guys, and 2 other guys (possibly more Perlon or Cadenza crew). A very stripped back minimal/techno groove with many dynamics for hours. Richie and Ricardo took it in turns of composing-directing the music live, selecting whose parts are used together to form the music at the time. It was one of the most amazing things I´ve ever experienced. Ricardo has an amazing stage pressence. The sound was amazingly loud-clear, glad I have muso ear-plugs, the bass shakes your insides!

We missed Sonar by Day, day 2, as we were off site seeing yesterday, at night we hooked up with Andreas Kauffelt & Iris, and Thomas Heckmann & Natasha, and went to Moog Club to see Stephan Bodzin, Oliver Huntemann & Goldfish Und Der Dolz. Then later went to Club Fellini and saw Matthias Tanzmann, Ripperton, Robert Babbicz, and surprise DJ T. (who replaced Thomas Schumacher who cancelled). These clubs are just around the corner from each other, and about 5 mins walk from where we´re staying, as is Sonar by day. The Sonar by night, is a 15 min taxi or bus ride away.

This afternoon, we´re going to the last day of Sonar by Day, I´m looking forward to seeing Claro Intellecto. Then we´re off to Sonar by Night, for Devo, Jeff Mills, Dave Clarke, Ame, Chateau Flight, Tadeo, JPLS, and much more…

Speak soon.

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June 6, 2007

Off to Europe…

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Music,Travel — decoded_ @ 10:13 am

Awakenings

It’s days away… My 6 week holiday in Europe with my girlfriend Joanne. I’m really looking forward to it, very excited! I’ve only been overseas once before (UK, Amsterdam, Paris), way back in 1993, so I’m well over-due for another visit.

Via Singapore we’re going to Barcelona, Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and London, plus a few other little side trips…

Music is a huge part of our travel plans, we’re heading to these events, tickets already purchased months ago.

Sonar 2007 – Day & Night (+ Various Club Nights / Beach Parties)
Barcelona (Spain) : 14-16 June 2007
http://www.sonar.es

Raum Playa Festival 2007
Parc Del Forum Barcelona (Spain) : 15 June 2007
http://www.raumplayafestival.com

Awakenings Festival 2007
Festivalterrein Spaarnwoude (Amsterdam) : 30 June 2007
http://www.awakenings.nl

Love Family Park 2007
Mainwiesen Hanau (Frankfurt/Germany) : 1 July 2007
http://www.lovefamily.de

Melt Festival 2007
Ferropolis Gräfenhainichen (Berlin/Germany) : 13-15 July 2007
http://www.meltfestival.de

And we hope to check out many of these clubs/club nights…

Some of the DJs, live acts, bands etc. performing at events/clubs/club nights in the cities we’ll be in at the time, that we hope we get to see many of, in no particular order…

Richie Hawtin, Magda, Gaiser, Troy Pierce, Ambivalent, Marc Houle, Tractile, JPLS, Paco Osuna, Marco Carola, Pan-Pot, Exercise One, Audiojack, Jay Haze, Matt John, Sian, Audiofly, Dapayk, Axel Bartsch, Ryan Crosson (Berg Nixon), Benno Blome, Glimpse, Quenum, Lee Van Dowski, 3 Channels, Herve AK, Arnaud Le Texier, Matthew Dear, Narod Niki (Ricardo Villalobos & friends – Laptop live jam session), Ricardo Villalobos, Autechre, Alex Smoke, Sleeparchive, Phage, Ruede Hagelstein, Elektrochemie, Lunca City Express, Will Saul, Sebo K, Efdemin, Loco Dice, Ada, Martin Buttrich, Thomas Schumacher, Robert Babicz, Ripperton, Marcin Czubala, Claro Intelecto, Luciano, Onur Ozer, Mathias Kaden, Dominik Eulberg, Gabriel Ananda, Oscar Mulero, Oliver Huntemann, Goldfish Und Der Dulz, Tigerskin (Dub Taylor), Mike Shannon, Roman Flügel, Dan Berkson & James What, Tadeo, Andrew Weatherall, Samim, Matthias Tanzmann, Steve Bug, Guido Schneider, Martini Bros, Chardronnet, Ame, Woody, Chateau Flight, James Holden, Agoria, Anja Schneider, Wighnomy Brothers, Swat-Squad, Green Velvet, Sven Vath, Christian Smith, Funk D’Void, Tiefschwarz, Joris Voorn, Steve Rachmad, Ivan Smagghe, Chloe, Jennifer Cardini, Rolando, Oliver Koletzki, Plasmik, Zombie Nation, Slam, Cosmic Sandwich, Tobi Neumann, Jussi-Pekka, Adam Kroll, Markus Muller, Ost & Kjex, Valentino Kanzyani, Marko Nastic, Rekleiner, Marco Passarani, Estroe, GummiHz, Sleeper Theif, Pier Bucci, Butane, Barem, Vince Watson, Mark Henning, Reynold, Mathew Jonson, Konrad Black, Ellen Allien, Apparat, Sascha Funke, Jake Fairley, Jesse Rose, Oxia, Superpitcher, Reinhard Voigt, DJ Koze, Daniel Stefanik, Martinez, Adam Beyer, British Murder Boys (Surgeon & Regis), Secret Cinema & Coming Soon, Dave Clarke, Cari Lekebusch, Miss Djax, Altern8, Jeff Mills, Bart Skills & 2000 & One, Jay Denham, Dan Curtin, Dan Bell, Robert Hood, Abe Duque, The Advent, Joey Beltram, Neil Landstrum, Stephen Bodzin, Miss Kittin, Radio Slave, Booka Shade, DJ T, M.A.N.D.Y, Heidi, Marek Hemmann, DJ Hell, Pig & Dan, Michael Mayer, Hot Chip, The Presets, Trentemoller, Beastie Boys, Mogwai, Devo

…And, that’s just listing the one’s I’m keen on seeing, the majority being minimal, techno, tech/electro-house sounds. That’s really insane isn’t it! Music over-dose! My musician’s ear plugs are never going to leave my ears!

It’s going to be tough deciding who to see, with many all on the same night at a bunch of different venues.

I was really hoping to see John Tejada and Depeche Mode on my Europe travels, but they’re not playing anywhere this time. I don’t think Heartthrob is playing anywhere during our travels either, which is strange as just about every other M_nus artist is playing.

I’m also really looking forward to all the travels and adventures, new experiences, meeting new people, different foods/wines, art gallerys, museums, tours, heritage, architecture, history, new sights & sounds, catching up with old friends and family, and generally having an amazing time, sharing it all with my love Joanne.

It will be fantastic to catch up with my German friend Andreas Kauffelt and his mate Thomas Heckmann for some crazy fun in Barcelona and Frankfurt too.

I’m really excited!

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June 3, 2007

Other music…

Filed under: Music — decoded_ @ 4:43 pm

Guitars

I had someone ask me recently what I listen to apart from techno music.

Here’s a bunch of bands/artists I listen to often on my iPod, these are in my ‘Davo Wants To Rock!’ playlist, listed in alphabetical order.

Audioslave
Ben Folds Five
Bjork
Boom Crash Opera
David Holmes
Depeche Mode
Duran Duran
Foo Fighters
Four Play String Quartet
Frou Frou
Happy Mondays
INXS
Jesus Jones
Kevin Shields
Killing Joke
Korn
Luscious Jackson
Massive Attack
Models
Mogwai
My Bloody Valentine
New Order
Placebo
Pop Will Eat It’s Self
Primal Scream
Radiohead
Simple Minds
Smashing Pumpkins
Soft Cell
Talking Heads
Tears For Fears
The Cure
The Shins
The Smiths
The The
Thom Yorke

Yeah, mostly 80’s and 90’s music, some from the 2000s. I’ve been really enjoying rediscovering The Cure of late, buying lots of their songs from iTunes. I should probably just go buy a few of their albums on CD and import them, would sound better. I’m starting to like a lot more guitar music again.

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May 31, 2007

Robert Babicz (Rob Acid) [Live] @ Civic Theatre – Sweet Chilli : 08.06.2007

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Music — decoded_ @ 6:57 pm

Robert Babicz [Live] @ Sweet Chilli

I’m thinking of going along to this. Here’s a link to a recent promo mix. I’ll be seeing Robert in Barcelona the week after as well, at the Intergroove party.

More info…
http://www.sweetchilli.com.au
http://www.robertbabicz.de
http://www.myspace.com/robertbabicz

Psst! Big w/end! Detroit techno legend Derrick May is playing at Chinese Laundry the following night.

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May 18, 2007

Where’s the music?

Filed under: Charts,decoded_,Music — decoded_ @ 5:16 pm

Format B - Bronsen Road EP [Hightgrade]

Some new music I’m enjoying at the moment, in no particular order…

Anthony Collins & Marc Antona – Sharks – [Micro-Fibres]
Format B – 4 For Texas – [Highgrade]
Efdemin – Acid Bells – [Curle]
Ito & Star – Suduko Kid – [Leftroom]
Staffan Linzatti – Quibble – [District Of Corruption]
Marco Carola – Dancing Days – [Plus 8]
John Tejada – Symmetry – [Palette]
Efdemin – Bergwein – [Dial]
Ada – Living It Up – [Areal]
Ada – Call The Tune – [Areal]
Joris Voorn – Minor – [Green]
Ink & Needle – Seven/Eight – [Tattoo]
Ink & Needle – Five/Six – [Tattoo]
Aril Brikha – Akire – [Poker Flat Recordings]
Smash TV – Yellow Asteroids – [BPitch Control]
Minilogue – Inca – [WIR]
Alfa Romero – Night Coupe – [Player’s Paradise]
Ame – Shiro – [Sonar Kollektiv]

Thanks for the Ink & Needle digital promos Rune!

Let’s play Q & A…

So are we going to get/hear some new mixes soon of all this new music?

I hope so. I’d like to get a couple of mixes done before I head off on my Europe holiday (more on that soon). I’ll let you know when they come together.

Is decoded_ your Internet radio show still happening on Pulseradio? What’s happening with Pulseradio?

Well, I lost interest in Pulseradio late last year. The new owners who took over in July 2006 have killed what made it special, there’s no community there anymore. Have a look at the new site… http://www.pulseradio.net it’s gone commercial in a big way, I don’t want to be a part of that. I noticed decoded_ has now been dropped from the schedule too, so I guess it’s all over. I began with the original Pulseradio in May 2000, 7 years ago. It’s time to say “So long and thanks for all the fish”…

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May 7, 2007

Nathan Fake [Live] @ Chinese Laundry : 28.04.2007

Filed under: Clubbing & Gigs,Music — decoded_ @ 6:09 pm

Nathan Fake [Live] @ Chinese Laundry : 28.04.2007

Nathan Fake [Live] @ Chinese Laundry : 28.04.2007
Photo by: a_N_t from ITM

So I ended up deciding to go see Nathan Fake [Live] at Chinese Laundry, and forget Inxec at Beware The Cat @ Yu. I believe the BTC people are the same people who took over Pulseradio.

The night didn’t start well for me with public transport problems delaying getting into the city, followed by being held up in a queue for ages outside Chinese Laundry waiting to pay to get in. Not because it was full, or trying to appear popular, but because… get this, not enough people from the guest list had arrived and been checked off yet, as informed by the bouncer. WTF! Don’t clubs/venues prefer paying customers?

So, by the time I got in I wasn’t in the best of moods. Actually I think I was pre warmed up for the annoyed bad mood I usually end up with after spending time packed against ‘that’ crowd in Chinese Laundry. If you’ve been there you’ll know what I mean, it’s the reason so many friends refuse to go there anymore regardless of who is playing.

I was prepared for what to expect musically from a Nathan Fake live set having downloaded and listened to a recent one a few weeks prior.

The live Nathan Fake experience is a very glitched up, digitally manipulated, continually evolving one; full of twists and turns, sonic contrasts, stops and starts, tempo changes and rapid shifts of intensity, all with that trademark Nathan Fake fuzzy, melodic beauty running though it. The chaos is held together with layers of electronic ambience/noise, and abstract, synthetic, melodic sequences morphing between tracks.

During his live set you rarely get the chance to latch onto anything repetitive, beats and dance floor moments come and go, and never seem to sustain for long. “Was that music for people with A.D.D?” I heard someone comment afterwards.

I’m a fan of his music, especially his single releases, however the versions Nathan Fake performs live now have mutated far from their released versions. It’s like he’s never stopped developing/remixing them, then he further digitally manipulates them during live performance. He loves that beat-repeat effect.

I’m not sure, but I think I may have heard versions/elements of his tracks ‘Grandfathered’, ‘The Sky Was Pink’, ‘Dinamo’ and his remix of Remy’s ‘Scrambled’, along with lots of unknown, unfamiliar, new? material.

I was surprised when he got a lot harder and more intense than I was expecting with a brutal, banging version of his formula 303 and 909 acid-techno track ‘Undoing The Laces’, which was probably the best part of his set, some great intensity.

He ended his set with my favourite Nathan Fake track ‘Outhouse’, however it was stripped apart, live-remixed, with each element manipulated and messed with for ages, until finally everything was brought together, but then minutes later it was all over, finishing up with some abrasive, speaker destroying, digital audio/noise. I guess he’s ‘over’ that track now.

There seemed to be a lot of Nathan Fake fans amongst the 150-200 or so people crammed into the hot and sweaty cave, lots of cheers and frantic jumping about. Being right at the back near the entrance to the cave all night, I got good laughs seeing the ‘cave tourists’ entering, attempting to ‘get down’ on the dance floor, becoming confused by the musical chaos and then doing a quick exit back to the other room/s, all within a minute.

Mark Dynamix played prior, he played some good minimal/tech tracks, but also a lot of generic MOS style electro-house stuff that didn’t do much for me. It was all a bit too full on for what I’d consider a ‘warm-up’ set too, but the dance-floor loved it, and you can’t fault his mixing/track flow.

I stayed to hear a few tracks mixed up from UK’s Audiojack who followed. I got to hear that great Ito & Star ‘Sudoko Kid’ track. The cave emptied almost as soon as Nathan Fake finished. I agreed with what Wowky said at the time, how strange that was, as Audiojack were playing much more accessible and dance floor friendly music than Nathan Fake did.

Anyway, I’m happy I got to experience a live Nathan Fake set, but once is enough I think. It felt too self indulgent, too far into the ‘glitching everything up because you can’ side of live laptop performance for me, which kind of spoilt his music for me. I’ll stick to the recorded versions. Yeah, I’m difficult to please. I think Alex Smoke does a much better job of performing his music live, keeping it close to the released versions sounds/arrangements, whilst also satisfying his own desires to manipulate things live in clever ways.

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