After the fun of DJing at FECKNO! in Bondi Junction, my girlfriend, friends and I made a spare of the moment decision to head into the city and go check out Josh Wink at Chinese Laundry, not knowing what flavour of techno/house music he was going to play. Much thanks to Quest and his sexy new car.
Once Josh Wink started up we were very happy we’d made the effort. For the first hour and half he blended up a fantastic mix of funky, hypnotic, minimal, techno grooves, featuring lots of Alex Under sounds/type-sounds. The cave/room had space to groove and move, with the right amount of people to create a happening/friendly vibe. I think a lot of the ‘usual’ type Laundry crowd don’t ‘get’ minimal, so they’re kept entertained by the party-house/electro-house in the other room.
I didn’t get a good look at what Josh Wink was using to mix, but imagine he was using CDs with CDJ-1000s as there was a lot of looping going on. ** He would often use a looped section of one track to bring in the next track over the top. He never really let tracks reach their break-downs, so the continuous beats/grooves and hypnotic cycles of sounds had a great dance-floor intensity. It reminded me of the vibe Richie Hawtin created when he last played in Sydney, layering up loops of parts of tracks.
I only recognised a handful of tracks Josh Wink played/looped, which is how I like it. Some train-spotting…
Friendly People (Alex Under) – Music Is Improper
Alex Under – Multiplicanciones2 (C2)
Audion – I Gave You Away
Joris Voorn – Year Of The Monkey (Can You Feel The Force)
Matt O’Brien – Serotone (Radio Slave Panorama Garage Remix)
SLG – Caffeine
Alex Under – El Danubio Universal
There were also some Jacek Sienkiewicz, Donnacha Costello sounding productions as well, I may be off the mark on those though.
We left as he started getting into more harder, louder, head-smashing, old-school techno/acid sounds, heard a Hardfloor track amongst that. I think he was mixing up an old, banging Robert Armani track as we headed out.
Reports on ITM about ‘The Future Music Festval’ where Josh Wink played earlier during the day/night, said he played a lot of old, well known, techno classics, and older tribal-techno. I’m glad we got to hear his minimal side.
A fun night out.
** : Someone on ITM just mentioned they saw he was using a small unit with 8 rectangular buttons and a dial on it. That sounds like one of the Red Sound looping units… http://www.redsound.com/products/soundbiteXL