The Japanese guy with great taste in techno/minimal sounds, with regular charts and mixes on his site, looks like he’s finally back on-line. A random Googling around found him. Welcome back Kei. Where have you been? What happened?
I’ve featured many of his excellent mixes on my Internet radio shows in the past.
I’ve been a fan of The Cure on and off for more than the last couple of decades, discovering them initially through high-school friends in the 1980s, shouts to Rebecca Penberthy. Disintegration would have to be my fave album by The Cure, followed closely by The Head On The Door. I’ve had quite a few chances over the past couple of decades to go see them live, but never made it happen. Over the last couple of years I’ve listened to The Cure more than I ever have, thanks to iTunes and my iPod. So… I jumped at the chance to finally see them live when our friend Rozie offered to get tickets for us whilst we were still OS. Thanks Rozie!
Even though I was seated far from the action on stage on Friday I really enjoyed their 3+ hours live show. I was very happy to hear heaps of my fave songs: Fascination Street, A Night Like This, Pictures Of You, The Walk, Lullaby, High, Love Song, Push, Hot Hot Hot, Inbetween Days, Kyoto Song, Just Like Heaven, Primary, Disintegration, Never Enough, Friday I’m In Love, Let’s Go To Bed, Close To Me, Why Can’t I Be You, A Forest, Boys Don’t Cry and The Kiss… which sounded massive, I love how intense that song gets!
They also played quite a lot of other stuff, much that I’m not so familiar with, maybe some of the songs from more recent releases, or stuff from when I was too absorbed in dance music to pay any attention at the time. There were quite a few slow, dark, deep songs, that really brought the mood down, things you wouldn’t really expect to hear during a huge concert performance, but respect to them playing what they wanted to. I would have liked to have also heard 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing An Arab, and The Caterpillar, but you can’t please everyone. I heard they played a couple of these on Thursday night. We got Friday I’m In Love, with it being a Friday night, Thursday missed out on that.
Their whole show was full of musical contrasts, much like their music/releases. It was quite a roller coaster ride of up/down moods and varying intensities, all with a fantastic light show and projections to match. Some very clever lighting programming, each song having it’s own unique look. At times the lighting and music together was hypnotising and mesmerising. I was absorbed in it deeply, I was seeing spots for hours afterwards from that light-show too.
My only dissapointments were that there were no keyboards on stage/no keyboardists. They did have some programmed synth, keyboard, percussion parts backing many of the songs, which sounded great, but they chose to use lead guitar to play all the main string, piano, synth, brass keyboard lines in many of their well known and much loved classics. How can lead guitar replace the lead synth line in The Walk or the brass/trumpet lines in Why Can’t I Be You?!? Why didn’t they just program those keyboard/synth parts as well, or get in a session keyboardist? I’m glad they didn’t play Love Cats, it wouldn’t work without the piano. I played keyboards in a live band called Napoleon Goes Solo in Adelaide in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s which used to perform many covers of songs by The Cure, so I knew those keyboard parts/sounds very well. I was dissapointed to not hear them. Shouts going out to Neville Hill from NPG, I hope all is well.
The concert sound was great, very loud! I’m glad I was wearing my musicians ear-plugs. The mix was very well done, some very cool mix-wide effects used during some songs, making for a huge, thick, wall of swirling, dense sound, and at other times a thin, fragile sound, reflecting the lo-fi production of their earlier work. At times I felt the mix needed more bass guitar, and shortly after thinking that the bass guitar level would rise, thanks sound engineer. Roberts voice sounded great the whole performance, and everyone played really well I thought, great drummer! You could feel/tell they were getting a little tired during the last encore after 3+ hours! They must have done 3 or 4 encores, I lost count!
I enjoyed their performance. I’m glad I’ve seen them live now. I just wish I had seen them live before their keyboardists/guitarists left. Might have to hunt down some older live DVDs. Any recommendations?
Some of the other things we got up to on our holiday, places we went, things we did, sights we saw… I’ll set up a Flickr account soon and start posting up some photo’s. More things to be added, trying to remember it all…
Here are all the techno/minimal DJs and live acts my girlfriend and I saw during our travels in Europe/UK, on our fantastic 6 week holiday during June/July 2007.
Some of these people we saw for hours, others we only saw for minutes. We often found many of the people we wanted to see were all on at the same time in different rooms/areas. This isn’t the full line-ups of these parties/events/club nights, I’m just listing the people who we saw play.
Sonar Festival 2007 – Day 1 – Barcelona : Thu 14 June 2007 James Holden
Raum Player 2007 Music Festival – Barcelona : Thu 14 Jun 2007 Matt John, Audiojack, Ryan Crosson/Berg Nixon, Glimpse [live] Herve AK, Ripperton
Sonar Festival 2007 – Night 1 – Barcelona : Thu 14 June 2007 Narod Niki [live] (laptops based live band featuring… Ricardo Villalobos, Richie Hawtin, Mark Ernestus
…Moritz Von Oswald, Dandy Jack, Zip, Luciano, Thomas Melchoir)
Plantage 13 Night @ Moog Club – Barcelona : Fri 15 Jun 2007 Goldfish Und Der Dulz [live], Oliver Huntemann, Stephan Bodzin [live]
Intergroove Party @ Club Fellini – Barcelona : Fri 15 Jun 2007 Robert Babicz [live], Ripperton, Matthias Tanzmann, DJ T. (Replaced no-show Thomas Schumacher)
Sonar Festival 2007 – Day 3 – Barcelona : Sat 16 June 2007 Claro Intelecto [live]
Sonar Festival 2007 – Night 3 – Barcelona : Sat 16 June 2007 Devo [live], Cristian Vogel [live] JPLS [live], Tractile [live], Tadeo Vs Damien Schwartz [live] Dixon (Innervisions), Mathew Dear’s Big Hands (live band) [live]
Poker Flat Night @ Razzmatazz/The Loft – Barcelona : Sat 16 June 2007 Patrick Chardronnet [live], Guido Schneider, Agoria Vs Oxia
Minus Night @ City Hall – Barcelona : Sun 17 June 2007 Magda, Rebekah Auf
Cocoon – Offenbach (Frankfurt-Am-Main) : Fri 22 Jun 2007 Sven Väth, Sleeparchive (w/ DJ Pete) [live]
Robert Johnson – Offenbach (Frankfurt-Am-Main) : Sat 23 Jun 2007 Max Mohr [live], Optimo
Awakenings ‘Awakefest’ Festival 2007 – Festivalterrein Spaarnwoude (Amsterdam) : Sat 30 Jun 2007 Martin Buttrich [live], Joris Voorn [live], Anja Schneider, Polder [live] Mathias Kaden, Loco Dice, Richie Hawtin, Marc Houle [live] Magda, Marek Hemmann [live], Agoria, Wighnomy Brothers Bart Skills & 2000 & One, Pig & Dan, British Murder Boys [live], Green Velvet Cari Lekebusch, Adam Beyer, Steve Rachmad, The Advent [live] Dave Clarke, Joey Beltram, Robert Hood, Jay Denham
Love Family Park 2007 Festival – Hanau (Frankfurt-Am-Main) : Sun 1 Jul 2007 Sven Väth, Richie Hawtin Vs Ricardo Villalobos, Luciano
LFP 2007 After Party @ Cocoon – Offenbach (Frankfurt-Am-Main) : Sun 1 Jul 2007 Andre Galluzzi, Karotte Vs Dominik Eulberg Vs Andre Galluzzi
Minus Night @ Week12End – Berlin : Fri 6 Jul 2007 Paco Osuna, Marco Carola, Marc Houle [live], Troy Pierce Ambivalent [live]
Perlonized @ Panorama Bar (Berghain) – Berlin : Fri 6 Jul 2007 Fumiya Tanaka, Zip
Poker Flat Night @ Water-Gate – Berlin : Sat 7 Jul 2007 Argy, Steve Bug, Phonique, Martin Landsky Martini Bros [live], Patrick Gräser, Guido Schneider
Electronic Waves #2 @ Spindler & Klatt – Berlin : Sun 8 Jul 2007 Matt John, The Dose [live], Daniel Dreier, Marcel Dettman
Melt Festival 2007 (Day 1) @ Ferropolis – Gräfenhainichen (Germany) : Fri 13 Jul 2007 Onur Ozer Vs Mathias Kaden, Alex Smoke [live], Magda Marc Houle [live], Troy Pierce, Richie Hawtin, Autechre [live] DJ Koze, Tiefschwarz, Abe Duque
Tresor – Berlin : Sat 14 Jul 2007 Daniel Bell, Stewart Walker [live], Suzi Wong, Liquid, Dry
Club Maria – Berlin : Sat 14 Jul 2007 Dan Curtin, Jeremy P. Caulfield
Panorama Bar (Berghain) – Berlin : Sat 14 Jul 2007 Jesse Rose
Berghain – Berlin : Sat 14 Jul 2007 Ben Klock [live], Len Faki Vs Ben Klock, Paul Brtschitsch [live]
Fabric – London : Sat 21 Jul 2007 British Murder Boys [live], Vex’d [live], Digital Mystikz, Monolake [live] Craig Richards, Ricardo Villalobos, Omar S
Love your comment Paul! I have to say… Heathrow Airport Terminal 3 was a shocker! We’ll never depart from that airport ever again, warning… rant coming up!
We only just made our plane, due to depart at 12.30pm and we arrived at the airport at 7am! We processed our tax refunds, checked in our baggage, and then it took hours to get through all the security screening/x-ray areas. The new security measures in place at Heathrow are extreme. Some people got screened/x-rayed 3 times! It’s all random depending on what queue you chose to line-up in. So many people, so many queues!
What most annoyed us is now you’re only allowed to carry one piece of cabin baggage if you depart from Heathrow. No other airport has this limitation.
Joanne and I both had very full back-packs plus I had a record bag, and Joanne had another bag (sack) full of Europe’s finest chocolates. Our multiple bags didn’t agree with the one piece of cabin baggage policy. The solution (as advised by staff)… stick them together in a large plastic bag, and carry it as if it’s a single item until you’re through the security screening/x-ray areas. Stupid huh! How much fun do you think carrying a full back-pack and record bag together in a plastic bag in your arms is, for the hours it took to get through security?!?! Not very much! My arms were killing me!
Once we got through all of that drama we then only had about 10 minutes to look around the food, shops, and duty free area (with the other 1000s of people) until our flight was due to board.
However… the actual gate our plane was departing from had not been advised, and then was only indicated 10 minutes before the flight was actually due to depart! and it instantly showed ‘Flight Closing’! Panic! Oh, and how convenient that the gate we needed to get to was right over the other side of the terminal! We did the mad dash, then hit another queue, as every other passanger for our flight did the same mad dash. Then… another security check at the gate/lounge. But wait that’s not all… Now we’re going to cram you all into a bus to take you to the actual plane, which is… over the other side of the airport! Arghhh!
Once we were borded, we were further delighted at being delayed for 50 minutes before the plane could taxi and take-off. Arghhh!
You can imagine our mood after all that. Dark, very dark. Oh, I forgot to mention, to add to this… we also had had no sleep prior, having gone stright from Fabric (club), via a confusing early morning drive out of central London in the pouring rain, to quickly freshen up/shower up, pack up at Sandra & Mall’s place back in Lee/Greenwich, then had to drive to the airport car hire return, return the hire car, then onto the airport terminal via a shuttle bus, which was delayed by a road accident.
I sound like a whinging pom hum!
Anyway, all good now, we know for next time… avoid Heaththrow! Deep breath… rant over.
Fabric
Beta, if you’re reading, I now know why you dislike Fabric so much. The club is awesome, great spaces, excellent sound and lighting, but the crowd… is horrible. The push/shove on the dance-floor was even worse than what we had had to deal with across Europe at many clubs. Fabric has a very ethnic/mixed crowd too. B.M.B were great, very punishing, with relentless beats, a different sound to their Awakenings set, which had more broken beats, and changes of intensity, they played 4am-6.30am. Heard a little of Ricardo Villalobos on the way out, but the main room was way too packed, so packed I don’t know how people actually dance in there! He didn’t start till 5.30am! At one point we bumped into Jamie from Infusion there, which was a laugh. We heard many of the other people playing around the club for the couple of hours before B.M.B started up, didn’t like much of what we heard… nasty drum’n’bass, funky house, and grime. Dinner and drinks prior with… AC & DWC 🙂 was very nice, a fun night, lovelly to meet and chat to their guests/friends too, shouts to Rony and Maggot! It was really nice to have been invited out and to meet them. Whilst on the way out from dinner and drinks we bumped into Marc Houle and had a nice chat too.
Thanks to Sandra & Mal’s laptop I’ve had a chance to finally catch up on some Internet music stuff, iTunes, Juno, Beatport etc. Confirming some track ID’s, finding some of the music we’ve been hearing on our travels. Nice to grab some new tracks, podcasts, and mixes for my entertainment on the flight/s home.
Some of the new minimal/techno tracks we’ve been hearing out during our travels, that we’ve been loving, confirmed…
*EDIT* : Found a bunch more since getting back, added them to the list
Argy – Unreliable Virgin [Cocoon] Sascha Dive – Down Edit (Argy Mix) [Raum…Musik] Blackstrobe – I’m A Man (Audion Donation Mix) [Playlouder Recordings] Rejected – Lost [Rejected] Simon Baker – Plastik [Playhouse] Einzelkind – Spam Bot [Playhouse] Jesse Rose – Itchy Dog [Dub Sided] Troy Pierce – Lost On The Way To DC10 (Berlin Version) [Minus] Mountain People – Mountain003 [Mountain People] Curtiss Lee – 3 Fingers [Dumb Unit] Joris Voorn – Decay [Green] Pele – Childhood’s End [Connaisseur Superior] Tadeo – Eclipse [Apnea] Anja Schneider – Belize [Mobilee] Phonique – Bang [Dessous] T.G – Cave The Speakers (Konrad Black Remix) [Four:Twenty] False – Fed On Youth [Minus] Bart Skills & Anton Pieete – The Running Man [100% Pure] Holger Zilske – Enduro Disco / Aura [Leena] Dominik Eulberg – Grunschenkel (2000 & One Remix) [Traum] Marcin Czubala – Consigliere [Mobilee] Dennis Ferrer – Son Of Raw (Loco Dice Remix) [Objektivity] Martinez – Land-Crab/Angvault [Re:Connected] Vinyl – The Weasel [RebelOne] Robag Wruhme & Rolf Oksen – Dopamin [Freude-Am-Tanzen] Petre Inspirescu – Sakadat [VinylClub] Samin – Heater [Get Physical Music] Paul Ritch – Messene [Get Physical Music] Skoozbot – Next To Monchhichi [Plus 8] Simon Baker – The Fly (MyMy Remix) [Connaisseur Superior] Italoboyz – Viktor Casanova [Mothership] Shlomi Aber – Freakside [Ovum]
Mornin’ It’s our last full day in London today. We fly back to Sydney tomorrow around noon, sad our holiday is over, it’s been fantastic.
We ventured into the chaos that is central London yesterday, travelling on the train from Lee, near Greenwich, where we’re staying. We took a double-decker bus ride, not really having a plan of where to go/what to see, and wanting to escape the insane amount of people in Victoria Station and ended up near the Tate Modern art gallery/museum. We were delighted to find that a Salvidor Dali exhibition ‘Dali & Film’ is currently showing.
‘Dali & Film’ was an excellent exhibition, fantastic to finally see many of his most well known surrealism pieces, like the “Persistence Of Memory” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory the one with the melting clocks. It was really small though, it’s only about 30cm across. I love how the closer you get to his works, the more things you see, so detailed! Many of these works were not at his museum in Figueres Spain at the time we visited, although that museum was amazing regardless. The exhibition at the Tate Modern also had a number of films that Salvidor Dali was involved with, like the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’. We saw the most amazing short animated film, called “Destino” a creation by Dali & Walt Disney animator John Hench, made in 1946. The project was abandoned as it was too controversial at the time, and has only recently been digitally brought to life. It was like a living Salvidor Dali painting, very surreal, amazing! There are some YouTube clips of it if you hunt around. We’ve seen some amazing art on our travels.
We had a fantastic time last night, catching up with a big group of old and new friends at an excellent Tapas restaurant in Islington. A really fun night! Much love to you all, was fantastic to see you all.
We also had a few journeys on the tube, packed in like sardines, sweating it up. Heavy rains and flooding caused chaos on the tube lines yesterday. I think we might try check out the Portabello Road Market, or have a look around Covent Garden/Soho, and Oxford Street today.
We’re off to see British Murder Boys [live] at Fabric tonight. We’ve been invited out prior to dinner with… 🙂 as well, excited. Also playing are… Ricardo Villalobos, Craig Richards, Omar S, Monolake [live], Vex’d [live] and more… across 3 rooms.
Much love and huge thanks to our hosts during our travels… Andreas & Iris, Gino & Carmen, Bec & Greg, Sandra & Mal. Also sending out much love to all our friends around Europe and UK. We’ll see all you Aussie friends down under very soon…
![Simon Baker - Plastik [Playhouse]](http://users.on.net/~dmccann/images/plastik.jpg)
