decoded_ Something for your mind… Something for your mind…

Surgeon played an awesome three hour set here in Sydney on Saturday night. He blew our minds! Taking us on a fantastic journey of new and old techno, dubstep and electronica sounds and more. His set was very dynamic, with changes of intensity, twists and turns, deepness, darkness, and some unexpected blasts from the past, lots of memorable music.

I felt inspired and totally musically satisfied afterwards. I had a great jump around on the dance-floor at the front, the three hours went by in a flash, never a dull moment.

It was a really fun night, great venue, excellent sound, large techno/music passionate crowd showing vocal appreciation, lots of new/young and old/old-school friends and familiar faces about. The heavy rain we were met with leaving the venue at 2am (venue close) couldn’t dampen our spirits afterwards. I’m still on a high after this night, almost a week later. I think I’ll ride this buzz all the way to seeing Jeff Mills @ Stereosonic next month, and not spoil it with anything in-between, nothing would be good enough.

I’m really impressed with how different each of the Surgeon sets I’ve seen this year have been; Berghain in Berlin had a lot more deepness and dubstep sounds, Cable in London had more electronica/melodic (he even played some disco!) sounds, and now the Forum in Sydney with a hard/tough techno set.

My partner Joanne also saw his Brisbane and Melbourne performances as well, and mentioned the same, each performance being quite different in feel/sound. He certainly gave us a spanking (as he mentioned on his twitter) in Sydney.

Some tracks I knew and remembered him playing here in Sydney…

KiNK – Soda Caustic
KiNK – The Roots Of Techno
Frank Martiniq – Blast Corps
Egyptian Empire – That Horn Track
DJ Hell – Hot On The Heels Of Love (Dave Clarke Remix)
Kritikal Audio – Krup
Edge Of Motion – Set Up 707
A Homeboy, A Hippy & A Funky Dread – Total Confusion
Traversable Wormhole – Closed Timelike Curve (Marcel Dettmann Remix)
Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf (Surgeon Remake)
Surgeon – Atol
Karl O’Connor & Peter Sutton – Guiltless
Jeff Mills – i9
Surgeon – Move
Nitzer Ebb – Join In The Chant (Surgeon Remake)
Vainqueur – Lyot (Maurizio Mix)
Traversable Wormhole – Exiting The Milky Way (Surgeon remix)
Surgeon – Screw The Roses
X-313 – Interferon (Dave Clarke Remix)
British Murder Boys – Don’t Give Way To Fear
Surgeon – Prowler
Jeff Mills – Step To Enchantment (Stringent)
Surgeon – The Crawling Frog Is Torn And Smiles
Whitehouse – ?
Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce – Alien Girl
AFX – PWSteal.Ldpinch.D

A couple of IDs are from some ITM crew, thanks!

I’m pretty sure there were some other Surgeon and B.M.B tracks/loops played. There was also a heap of other stuff I didn’t know, and I love that; some acid, brutal techno, dubstep, and broken-beat, dark electronica sounds.

How spoilt are we? He’s just uploaded a recording of his Sydney set, get it here:

http://dj-surgeon.blogspot.com/2010/10/surgeon-at-forum-sydney-australia-23rd.html

Lots of happy Sydney techno people gushing about the night, here on ITM:

http://www.inthemix.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=277951

Thanks to everyone who made this tour come together.

More data:

http://dj-surgeon.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/tony_surgeon
http://www.dj-surgeon.com
http://voidsound.com

PS:

Joanne and I also got to hang out with him for a few hours on Sunday and chat over brunch, he’s a really nice guy, much respect.

* EDIT *

He’s just added the complete track-list to his blog, for his live set in Sydney, awesome!

Oneohtrix Point Never – Zones Without People
Surgeon – Klonk Part3
Robert Armani – Basement Rats
KiNK – Soda Caustic
AFX – Men 1 (loop)
Squarepusher – Planetarium (loop)
Phuture – We Are Phuture
2AMFM – Desolate Cities
OVR – Post Traumatic Son
Xhin – Key
Distance – Feel Me
Raime – Blackest Ever Black 2 (Regis version)
Corridor – Two Days 1
Whitehouse – Neronia
Nitzer Ebb – Join In The Chant (Surgeon remake)
Bas Mooy – Warsaw (Walker FSG mix)
Vex’d – Angels
KiNK – The Roots Of Techno
Cursor Minor – Everybody Want Power 111
British Murder Boys – Don’t Give Way To Fear 1
Bjorn Svin – Eat Like Hawks
Skudge – Melodrama (Aubrey remix)
Jeff Mills – i9
Orphx – Possession
Surgeon – Atol
Robert Hood – Range
Regis – Guiltless
Frank Martiniq – Blast Corps
Chasing Voices – Acidbathory
Whitehouse – Dumping The Fucking Rubbish
KiNK – Daddy Acid
Death Abyss – The Hermetic Antagonist (Mix two)
Vainqueur – Lyot (Maurizio mix)
Reeko – The Day After
Surgeon – The Crawling Frog Is Torn And Smiles
DJ Hell – Hot On The Heels Of Love (Dave Clarke remix)
Sinistra – Kakax (Gunjack Peak Time mix)
Surgeon – Bad Hands Break Part II
Breach – Fatherless
Surgeon – Exhibit
Traversable Wormhole – Exiting The Milky Way (Surgeon remix)
Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf (Surgeon remake)
Egyptian Empire – The Horn Track
Aphex Twin – 54 Cymru Beats
Kritical Audio – Krup
Paul Mac – DVD Crash
Surgeon – Screw The Roses (Live in Norway)
Traversable Wormhole – Closed Timeline (Marcel Dettmann remix)
Surgeon – Argon
x-313 – Interferon (Dave Clarke remix)
Jeff Mills – Real Life
Morganistic – Marbles
Reeko – 6 Sievert
Function – Montage
Scorn – The Palomar
Huren – Tinseltown
Whitehouse – A **** Like You
Edge Of Motion – Set Up 707
Ed Rush, Optical and Fierce – Alien Girl
~~~
Nebula II – Atheama
A Homeboy, A Hippie & A Funki Dredd – Total Confusion (Confusion Mix)
Millsart – Step To Enchantment (Stringent)
AFX – PWSteal.Ldpinch.D

Here’s a faster link to download the live set from…

http://hotfile.com/dl/78988727/3d1710f/Surgeon_at_The_Forum_Sydney_Australia_23rd_October_2010.mp3.html

Had a really fun night at this party, well, once Joanne and I got over the shock of seeing again how expensive a night out here in Sydney is, compared to Berlin a few weeks before. We stayed at this till the very end, lights on, eveyone out at 5am.

Prior to the night, I was a bit concerned that Marcel Dettmann may just play hours of that cold, deep, stripped bare, building block techno that he and Ben Klock are known to play, produce and have on their labels. I like that sound, but hours of it, wouldn’t be very interesting, well, not to a crowd outside of a night at Berghain in there for the long haul. After seeing Marcel Dettmann play, I can tell he knows this too.

I was well impressed with the range of sounds and intensities he played here in Sydney. Mixing up some of that Dettmann/Klock sound with lots of memorable, melodic techno/house, and a little tech-house, and minimal, with many nods to past techno/house classics, and a large serve of some proper, percussive, hard, solid, techno compression, all kept under 127bpm (I like how techno has slowed down).

He kept my interest for his entire set, playing for more than 4 hours. I had a great jump around on the dance floor. Even with the changes of style/intensity throughout his set, it all seemed to flow well. He finished off with some interesting selections for his encore tracks, some electro, electronic-body-music, beatless melodic electronica, some Krautrock and Kraftwerk, respect. I think he was using both vinyl and CDs to play, a few slips in the mix here and there, but mostly he was solid and tight. I was left musically very satisified and inspired. Joanne noticed he was wearing a Sandwell District t-shirt too, very cool.

This party was going to be at Plantation at The Empire (old Palladium) in Kings Cross, but from what I heard management there kicked out all the recent house and techno nights/promoters, leaving the Disconnected crew with a tough time finding a new venue at the last minute. They ended up getting the side room at Space (above Shark Hotel) in the city, sharing the venue with the DefQon1 crew using the main room.

Probably no more than 100 people there for Disconnected in the side room, but enough for the small space to look/feel busy enough to create a vibe. Minimal lighting, lots of darkness, space to move, respectful dance-floor, with lots of friendly, familar music passionate people about, plus friendly staff and quick bar service, all win! The only negative was the sound system which struggled to push out any proper bottom end or volume intensity, but was adequate enough. I think every other sound system will fail me now though, when compared to experiencing Berghain’s. There was no sound bleed from the main room, and the DefQon1 kids stayed away, all good.

Some of the tracks Marcel Dettmann played that I knew/remember…

Aaron Carl(RIP) – Down
Gerd – Arkests Blaze
Justin Martin – The Sad Piano (Charles Webster Remix)
James Ruskin – Work (Steve Rachmad Remix)
Shed – My R-Class
Deuce – Cue Ed
Planetary Assault Systems – Hold It (Deuce Remix)
DJ Hyperactive – Wide Open
Lil Louis – Why’d U Fall ( I Called You)
Marcel Fengler – Sculptures
Richie Hawtin – 005
DJ Hyperactive – Music Box
Ray Kajioka – Steam
Function – Diassafected (Ben Klock Remix)
Junior Boys – Work (Marcel Dettmann Remix)
Tadeo – 4
Kraftwerk – Numbers
Kraftwerk – Computer World

Thanks for putting this on Disconnected crew, top night. So, Ben Klock next?