Okay, the line was *way* too long, causing me to miss most of Broom's
set. What I did hear, though, I liked: clean, groovy hard techno - very
subtle.
Autechre came on - very sparse gear-wise. Their music, however, was
brilliant. About 40 minutes of up-tempo, mid-tempo, and down-tempo alien
funk, with very dark, moody edges. My only complaints were that their
sound was not a very "live" one. They were twiddling knobs, but the songs
sounded far too perfect - almost as if they were coming straight off of
(dare I say it?) DAT. However, it was so nice to hear proper
experimental techno at high decibels, and their stuff was *very* advanced
rhythmically.
Now I know Jonah Sharp has been out of his beatless whooshy stage for a
while now, so I expected some beats when he took the stage, but I
expected mellow, delicate beats. Well, Jonah stepped up to his gear and
for the next hour or so proceeded to steal the show. He started off with
some smooth, slower drum'nbassy stuff, but most of his set was
straight-up, aggressive techno-house with a very elegant, BDP-esque
sense of melodicism. There was the occasional breaky track, but most of
it was four-to-the-floor stuff - not necessarily an IDM no-no, mind you,
as it definitely wasn't inane floor fodder. And to top it all off,
Jonah kicked it *live*, getting totally into his set, bopping around, and
throwing in/dropping out rhythmic elements on the fly. Needless to say,
he truly impressed me, as I'd no idea how much he'd embraced such a
dance-oriented sound. Much props to him. All I need to know now is if
any of the stuff will see the light of day on wax. Gamall, are you out
there? ;)
- Matthew
"I grew up thinking that techno music is actually something that you
can't imagine. That is techno at its best. If you hear something that
you'd never expect to hear - that's techno. If you hear something that
kind of sounds like you've heard it before, then it's not techno."
- Jeff Mills