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.
![John Tejada - Labyrinth EP [Palette Recordings]](http://users.on.net/~dmccann/images/labyrinth.jpg)
