Just a few quick words about MuZiq's live performance at the Astralwerks
party at the Kitchen friday night. He played a 75min set in the basement
in front of a seated audience, a situation that I found highly
pleasurable. It was nice to be able to sit and listen intently, rather
than face the distraction that dancing etc can sometimes bring. That
said, Mike P was apparently a little dissapointed at playing to the
seated masses. The setup was nice, his gear (Yamaha DX11, Roland D50,
Casio something) was situated on a table on the floor and people were able
to sit right next to it. His set spanned Tango, Bluff Limbo, Makes A Racket,
but also included large amounts of unreleased material. Most of his time was
spent loading disks, pointing and clicking with the mouse, and tweaking the
distortion knobs. Occasionly he would play the melodies on the Casio in front
of him, but most of the time he was staring at the Atari screen. I talked to
Mike for a short while after his set and he was very eager to tell me about
all he was doing - not the geeky and horribly shy person we sometimes hear
about. New material coming up includes the full length on Astralwerks "In
Pine Effect," the collaboration with RDJ on Rephlex, Kid Spatula on
Reflective, and another full length on his own label, Planet Mu. As for
Bluff Limbo, he's still waiting for Rephlex to give it a full release. He
said he was very eager to get it onto CD, and that it was unquestionably
his favourite album of his so far. The Bluff reissue and the RDJ
collaboration will be his last recordings on Rephlex.
After Muziq's brilliant set, the short FSOL film was played on the giant
screen in the basement. The few reviews I'd read of it to date weren't
very impressive, but I have to say I enjoyed it. The music and pictures
were tied together very well and the sequences of the asian man
half-drowning underwater were odd enough to capture my attention.
The Single Cell Orchestra VS Freaky Chakra performance upstairs was
extremely energetic, but after a short while I retired to the the
basement again to see Ben Neil which was a really surreal experience.
The evening played out with a great three hour ambient set from DJ Orion,
and I think I was the last person to leave when he finished a little after
6am. All together it was an excellent night, many thanks to Astralwerks
for bringing it to us.
:: Alan M. Parry
:: fluid@hyperreal.com
:: <finger me for PGP key>
::
http://hyperreal.com/~fluid