decoded_ Something for your mind… Something for your mind…

Photo by Hobietje taken from ITM *

After flying in from Melbourne at 9pm on Saturday, after a busy couple of days down there, I’m glad we found the energy to head out to this.

Steve Bug was great. I really enjoyed his set, and danced non-stop from start to finish. Not as special as the previous time he played in the cave, but still a great two hours of excellent, tightly mixed, quality music. There was a great groove, and lots of interesting sounds. A nice range of minimal, deep-tech-house, acid, deep-techno tracks, and a great flow between them, which is something that was missing from his set in Melbourne the night before.

There was a great up for it vibe, vocally appreciative and mostly music focused crowd in Chinese Laundry’s cave, a few over excited fan-boys about making fools of themself. Shock, horror… the cave was comfortable on this outing, cool with space to move. It makes a nice change from the packed in like sardines sweat-box experience you often get in the cave at Chinese Laundry, which was the case last week for Gui Boratto [live] I heard.

On Saturday had there been none of those inconsiderate, self absorbed, non music focused, trashy, rude, pushing past, idiots around, whose idea of dancing is to bash or fall into everyone around, it would have been a perfect night. Thankfully there were not that many of them, but enough for me to be mentioning it. I try not to let them spoil my night, however it was difficult to ignore them at the Melbourne party, being a large percentage of the crowd there. In Melbourne it felt like every person in the club was entering and exiting the dance-floor area via pushing into/through us over and over. A.D.D much? Kids these days huh! Clubbing since late 1988 you notice the change.

Back to the music… As usual with Steve Bug sets, he plays heaps of up-front, promo, un-released music. Mixing it up with Traktor Scratch (thanks for the correction) vinyls/interface, Apple laptop with external hard-disc. I only ever know a small amount of what he plays at the time, then find out more months later. Tracks we heard him play in Berlin in July 07, have only just been released in the last few months, like Afrilounge – Lux Dementia. Here’s a few tracks I knew/remember hearing on Saturday night…

Lucio Aquilina – Magic M
Sebo K – Far Out
Stimming & H.O.S.H – Radar
Ryo Murakami – Monument
SIS – Orgsa
G.Schneider, A.Galluzzi, T.Schirmacher – Albertino

Much the same tracks played in Melbourne, with the addition of…

Len Faki – My Black Sheep (Radio Slave Remix)
Ricardo Villalobos – Enfants (Chants)
Koljah – Antigua
Neville Watson & Kink – Inside Out
Plasmik – Pitch It (Claude VonStroke Remix)

* Hey I tried on and almost bought a black version of that t-shirt Steve Bug is wearing in Berlin last year, ubercoolische!

I’ve come back to edit in some comments about this party…

QBH has changed a lot since I was last there for the TransAtlantic6:Yellow party with Adam Beyer & Joel Mull in 2004. It seems much more opened up and brighter. It had a better vibe before, felt more like a club, darker and less like an aircraft hanger. It’s a great space for large parties though, however I never thought I would say this, but, I prefer a venue like the tiny cave in Chinese Laundry for it’s intimate vibe much more than big parties/venues now. Seeing Steve Bug at both venues mentioned here over two days really confirmed this for me.

The sound at QBH is good, but not amazing. You really have to find the right spot, there’s too much bass close to the stage, and not enough at the edges of the dance floor. I think it’s missing mid range maybe too. There was a very noticable audio quality improvement between Steve Bug with his Traktor Scratch setup and Sven with vinyl records, could have been just an increase of volume level maybe?

Lighting and projections/visuals are nice, although with that big white wall behind the stage, it makes for a very bright dance floor/club.

With expensive drink prices and $5 per item cloak charge (it was cold, we had jackets) we had to double take we were in Melbourne not Sydney.

The crowds at Melbourne techno parties have really changed over the years, and not for the better. I’ve been to many big techno parties in Melbourne since the late 1990s. Where have all the smiles gone? There were too many far gone, trashed people with really short attention spans constantly moving on/off the dance floor at this. Where’s the dancing? Where’s the Melbourne shuffle gone? Where’s the sustained music focus? Younger crowds huh! I’ve not been knocked about and bashed into that much, by as many rude people (no one says sorry) at a dance event since being in Barcelona last year. It really felt like there was a conspiracy for as many people to bump into us as much as possible.

Onto the music…

Steve Bug was already playing as we arrived just before 12. I guess he’s not really used to playing to an empty dance floor, and being the warm-up DJ anymore. I think it may have thrown him off balance somewhat. He played nice tracks, but in all the wrong order I felt, the flow was disjointed. It sounded like a struggle between wanting to play peak time tracks and having to play warm-up tracks. It was quite dissapointing, he was so much better in Sydney the next night.

Sven Vath was up next, for 3 hours. First hour was nice minimal/tech-house sounds. Next hour was harder, darker minimal/techno stuff, but somewhat bland, too many Dubfire tracks, I didn’t know much of what he played at the time. The last hour was crazy electro/synthetic German style stuff, think Alter Ego, then into some warm, fluffy house stuff to end off with. It was a nice journey of sounds.

He’s a very entertaining DJ to watch, such a trash-bag attention whore. I mean that in a good way. It’s amazing he can keep all his mixes together so tight with that all that behaviour. He really loves to party, he brings the party! As I mentioned last year, the vinyl is a big part of his performances, fanning himself with records, and waving them around above his head… Speaking of his head, he did the make a turban out of your ubercoolische tight white t-shirt trick, so his buffed, waxed chest was on show for all, you have to laugh. He was much more subdued in Frankfurt last year, played more interesting sounds too. Glad I saw him again though, he’s a legend. Didn’t make it to his Sydney performances.

Gui Boratto playing live out of an Apple laptop had a tough time following on from Sven, and playing to a 5am crowd who were finding it hard to stay focused. I was expecting big things after all the hype about Gui’s off-the-hook performance in Sydney the week before at Chinese Laundry. To be blunt, I found him really boring, and I’m a big fan of his productions, and have bought many of them both on vinyl and mp3. I didn’t recognise anything he played until about 40 minutes in, and the sounds of ‘Gate 7’ rolled in, but by then he had already lost me. I was really hoping to hear ‘Decay’ but it never came. Not sure if he was having technical troubles, but transitions between sounds/tracks didn’t go smooth and he was heads down in his laptop screen and controller the whole performance. Much of his set reminded me of his track with Martin Eyerer ‘The Beach’ which has a nice deep minimal beauty, but for me is much more of a listening to than dance-floor style track. I felt with what he played he was being too intricate for a crowd who just wanted more doof doof. He needed to have started with more intensity, not slowly build up to it. He would have worked better being on before Sven, or even Steve. Probably should have seen him at Chinese Laundry in Sydney, would have worked better for his minimal sounds.

It was cool to go to another Melbourne party, but it wasn’t really a special night, surprising with such a good line-up.

Photo’s here…

http://www.inthemix.com.au/photos20/080229-svenvath

Some of the music spotted during Sven’s entertaining 3 hour set…

Meat Katie & D.Ramirez – Stop The Revolution (Dubfire Remix)
Dubfire – Emmisions
Sebbo – Watamu Beach
Martin Buttrich – Hunter
Etienne Jaumet – Repeat Again After Me (Ame Remix)
Steve Rachmad – Moog On Acid
Lucio Aquilina – Magic M
G.Schneider, A.Galluzzi, T.Schirmacher – Albertino
Supermayer – Two Of Us
Alter Ego – Why Not?
Style of Eye – The Big Kazoo
Plastikman – Spastik (Dubfire Remix)
Mikael Stavostrand – Q Fresa (Andomat 3000 Remix)
LCD Soundsystem – Too Much Love (Rub’N’Tug Mix)
Joris Voorn – The Deep
James Mowbray & Leiam Sullivan – Tropical Heights (Ink & Needle Remix)
Pepe Bradock – Rhapsody In Pain (Live)