decoded_ Something for your mind… Something for your mind…

This is a Reactable. Bjork uses one in her live show. Check out this video

It’s been a busy few weeks of silly season partying, been to all these…

FourPlay String Quartet @ Spiegeltent (Hyde Park) – Sydney Festival : 12.01.2008
– I really enjoy seeing FourPlay, I always get a very emotive response to their sounds. This was a perfect little afternoon break on a very busy day, the Spiegeltent is magical!

Andrew Weatherall @ The Oxford Art Factory : 12.01.2008
– We watched 2+1/2 hours of his 4 hour set, and I only knew 3 tracks, which was scary, as it was exactly the types of sounds I’m into. Solid, tight mixing, great deep, tech-house, minimal sounds. He was bopping and smoking non stop the whole time. The OAF really needs to get better air-conditioning!

Bjork @ Sydney Opera House – Sydney Festival : 23.01.2008
– Wow, that was an amazing performance! A really special night/show that I’ll remember forever, and I’m not even much of a Bjork fan these days. Some fantastic technology in use with that show, nice to see Mark Bell (LFO) on stage, sneaky part of his ‘Freak’ track was very cool. Some great info about the tech in the show here.

Andrew Weatherall, Battles @ Warp Future Music – Becks Festival Bar : 23.01.2008
– We went to this straight after Bjork, and it was dissapointing in comparison. I’m not much of a fan of Battles sounds, way too chaotic for me. Mark Pritchard played some cool old-school techno sounds, LFO – “LFO” woo! AW played much the same sounds as his OAF set, we didn’t stay long.

Moodymann @ Mad Racket – Becks Festival Bar : 26.01.2008
– For every Moodymann track I like, there are probably about 10 that I’m not so into. It was an entertaining performance, DJing with mic action, DJing behind a white-sheet in silhouette for a while. Having him telling us he had his hand on/off ‘da mutherfu**ing rekid’ (sic) when the music stopped and started mid track. I’m glad I checked him out, but it was mostly musically outside what I’m into. I really liked that new unreleased Carl Craig track he played, heard some Nitzer Ebb as well. These MR @ Becks Bar have always been more about hanging with friends than the music for me anyway.

Ripperton @ Lost Baggage – The Cross : 27.01.2008
– I really enjoyed his sounds, best set of music I’d heard out for a while. Great minimal/tech-house stuff. It was a really fun night with friends. I like this venue, apart from the over-priced drinks and tooted up cross trash and mash bags it attracts. I enjoyed chin-stroking, track IDing with Tad and Wowky, a few given from Ripperton himself… Here’s what we spotted…

Johnny D – Manipulation
Stimming – Getting Out Of Something
Joris Voorn – Decay
Marcel Dettmann – Quicksand
Robert Babicz – Sin (Ripperton Remix)
Ripperton – Zugunruhe
Sebbo – Chunky Fudge (Ripperton Remix)
Dubfire – Ribcage
Francois K – Road Of Life (Radio Slave Dub)
Kabale Und Liebe – Mumbling Yeah
Andre Kraml – Safari (Holden Remix)
Dennis Ferrer – A Black Man In Space
Newworldaquarium – Tresspassers
Swayzak – Smile And Receive (Cassy Beatmix)
Rich Nicholls & Asher Jones – Mogadon
Kenlou – The Bounce
Beanfield – Tides (Ripperton unreleased remix)
Dave Aju And The Invisible Art Trio – Be Like the Sun
Minz – Darkslide
Style Of Eye – Rockett (Plasmik Remix)
Sonja Moonear – 99 Erikas
Format B – Full House

We decided not to go to the Big Day Out, much to the dissapointment of friends, sorry guys! We sold our tickets days before, and now we’re really glad we did, as Bjork was really the only act we were that keen on seeing there, and then she cancelled her BDO Sydney gig anyway. We’re so very lucky we saw her amazing Opera House steps performance! We almost didn’t buy tickets.

Coming up…

Ripperton @ Sweet Chilli – Civic Theatre : 01.02.2008
– We didn’t end up making it to this.

DJ Bone @ Mainline – Mandarin Club : 08.02.2008
– Or this… We’ve had some really busy weeks of late, and work draining our energy. Not sure I would have liked to have been ‘boned’ with those hard techno sounds anyway.

Robert Henke (Monolake) – “Layering Buddha” @ Art Gallery of NSW : 14.02.2008
– Fantastic, see post above.

Hello, Happy New Year! Welcome to 2008…

I’ve been a big fan of John Tejada’s productions and DJ sets (MP3s) for many years. He’s one of my favourite producers. I’ve bought vinyl of just about everything he’s released over the last 3-4 years. I have to admit I wasn’t much of a fan of his earlier sounds/releases.

I was ecstatic when I learnt he was playing a live set here in Sydney at a Mad Racket party on NYE. The perfect party and special night for his sounds. There was no way I was going to miss this. John Tejada has played in Sydney once before, way back in 1999 at Tweekin’ @ Club 77. I remember him playing (DJing) a lot of fast full-on techno sounds that night.

So how was his live set on NYE?

Awesome! I really enjoyed it. Fantastic sounds, sounding very close to his releases, with some additional live tweekin’. No vocal/samples though. It’s refreshing to a see a live set without an Apple laptop.

His live set featured tracks… “Mono On Mono“, “Lost In Thought“, “Sweat On The Walls“, “Word Problems“, and the beautiful “The End Of It All” (played last of course). I think I may have also heard “Tyranny Of Choice” (or some elements of) as well. There were many other tracks/sections of music I couldn’t pick/didn’t know during his 90 minute live set.

There were moments of great intensity which brought big cheers from the dance-floor. His music was full of lovelly melodic hooks, synthentic bleeps, throbbing bass lines, deep-minimal rolling grooves, crisp simplistic beats. I had a great time on the dance-floor, exactly the sounds I enjoy/came to hear.

Having a quick chat to him after his set, a very friendly, down to earth guy. I learnt for his live performances he uses an Elektron Machinedrum (drum machine), an Elektron Monomachine (mono synth/sequencer), and a MFB-Synth Lite II (little mono synth, I want one!) all through a 16 channel mixer (I think he was using an Allen & Heath MixWizard 16), with a Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad (effects unit) on the effects sends. A very ‘minimal’ setup but with a big sound.

As to be expected at MR parties the sound system was excellent: warm, loud, punchy and clear, heaps of bass (too much if you sat around the edges). The additional laser and strobes were a little out of place at a MR I thought, too many flashbacks to my rave days!

Arriving just after midnight, my friends and I were a bit put off to hear Simon Caldwell mixing up lots of dark, hard, stripped back, old-school techno sounds, like: Cajmere – “It’s Time For The (Percolator)”, MD III (Mike Dunn) – “The Pressure Cooker” and Steve Poindexter – “Work That Mutha Fucker”. I was surprised to also hear him play Adam Beyer – “Remainings III (DK Remix)” and Samuel L. Session – “Tribe Cutz” later in the night. True to form Simon also played Moodymann – “I Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits”, Theo Parrish – “Falling Up (Carl Craig Remix)” and Late Night Tuff Guy (HMC) – “I Get Deeper”. Great tracks for sure, but I think we were in the mood to be hearing some ‘fun’ music at the time, something more melodic, lighter, deeper, happier sounding to warm up into our night.

I enjoyed pretty much everything Ken Cloud played all night/morning, great selection of music.

During the party I also remember hearing… Wild Planet – “Synthetic”, Moodymann – “Dem Young Sconies”, Anthony Collins & Marc Antona – “Sharks”, Simon Baker – “Plastik”, Gel Abril – “The Underground Bullshit”, Dario Zenker – “Newbe (Heartthrob Mix)” and Heartthrob – “Golum” a couple of Jimmi James favourites.

Many familiar faces around, crowd was good, friendly, fun. I think more than half the crowd were outside smoking it up on the green (bowling green) most of the night/morning, which was great for dance floor space (and my lungs) all night.

It didn’t seem anywhere near as packed as some of the MR parties I’ve been at in the past, which was great.

It was a fun NYE, but not really one of the most memorable ones. Leaving the tickets at home and having to go back to get them made midnight a non-event, but we forgive her.