Ok folks, finally got round to it (after all the AI2 fuss). This is a
review of the most stunning, well rounded and throughly enjoyable night
I've had for a long, long time.
Artists etc: MEGADOG 3 featuring Autechre, Eatstatic, Dj Micheal Dog +MC
Date: Wednesday 25 May 1994
Venue: Newcastle University Sudents Union
Cost: 7 quid
Time: 20:00 - 01:21
Review:
Well, again our union comes up with a stunner, I was expecting good things
after the awesome Sabresonic just a few weeks ago and the now infamous
Megadog all-nighter at Brixton last summer, which had previously been
just about the best night ever...
Megadog came up with the goods and provided a night to remember.
Megadog is a totally immersive techno experience. Every single sense is
pushed to overload, their slogan 'Feed your head' has more than just the
obvious druggy connotations, Megadog feeds your head in many different
ways...All the senses...
Sight:
The whole experience was a unmatched visual extravaganza. Descending down
into the basement at the union one would have been forgiven for thinking
you'd just been warped into another building. They'd hung hundreds of
cloth backdrops, square kilometers of the stuff. They divided the huge
low ceilinged main room into different areas, principally a bigish chill
out area (a tribute to the music was that this remained virtually empty
all night :) and a dance arena ( and many neat little sub rooms and
'corridors')
All the back drops had great trippy/spacey designs, and they covered the
ceiling too. I thought I was in some huge mad trippy tent. I wonder what
the fire reg guys would have thought about it!
The stage setup was great. The equipment ('nuff keyboards!) was piled all
over it. Autechre's stuff was right at the front, inches form the crowd,
you could've actually reached out and touched it, this made for a really
involving performance... behind the equipment there was a huge model of a
brain, which was later illuminated by some arcline thingies which
stretched out and down along the stage.
The main effect lighting was provided by 6 of these huge scanning light
things. They weren't lasers but provided a similar effect, VERY powerful
light, swizzling about, they changed colur during the night. Projections
were everywhere, almost too many, blending into the atmosphere. Lots of
UV too. Megadoggers were wandering round, handing out luminous card shapes
and encouraging you to waggle them at people. And boy does this do funny
things to your eyesight!
They aslo had cool stilt walkers too. They were similar to the sapce
monster dragon things thye'd had at Brixton but these were far cooler.
One girl was decked out as a seriously fucked up angel, with a huge beak
thing and wings, all in white, she kept leaning down and leering at the
crowd. She scared one of my friends shitless! The guy was ultra cool, all
in white and a bit like a Storm Trooper from Star Wars but on silts, just
his eyes staring out from between a gap in the Muslim style head gear.
Totally surreal and post-apocalyptic, and *very* Megadog. It was all part of
the atmosphere.
Smell:
The soap dodgers of course! :) :) Well yes there was a very large crusty
element to the crowd (god knows where they all came from, I didn't know
Newcastle had that many), but this just added to the atmosphere. The
crowd was really good, clued up and friendly. They all knew what it was
about.
jAmz <J.P.Walsh@bradford.ac.uk> said in his review of the bradford night,
that it was just about the most"...drugs orientated night i've been
to...", well I have to agree, just about everyone seemed to be one
something and I was asked if I had any acid, several times ("only the vinyl
sort mate"). I'm beginning to wonder if I look like a drug dealer, it's
not the first time I've been asked :( [:)]
Four of my friends (all girls and all medic undergrads!) tried Ecstacy for
the first that night. I was vaguely worried about this, but half the fun
of the night was watching them react...(see my additional post - Es it
worth it?)
Back to the important stuff, the crowd kicked basically. And what they'd
come to kick too....
Ears:
Music, well it was just actually *quite* good. Totally fucking awesome!!! I
have to admit that I wasn't 100% keen on the stuff played at the Brixton
Megadog, Drumclub and PW Ov Gaia were totally boring (even if AFX and
Orbital were the biz) but this time there were no fillers, consistent
quality all night.
The tunes were supplied via the biggest sound rig I've ever seen in
Newcastle. Two gi-normous speaker stacks, each 4 meters square, reaching
right to the ceiling, they had backdrops stretched over them so they were
literally like walls. I knew it was going to be a good night when I saw
the outside entrance doors resonating to the bass line!!
Autechre were playing as I arrived (at about 21:30). I have to say I just
don't know why they released Incunabula. It's pretty much consistently
boring shite. Live, they are a revelation. Others have said they are much
better in the flesh and I totally agree with them. They were just totally
different. All the Autechrey sounds were there, and I recognised all the
elements off Incunabula, but the sound was just sooo much more involving.
It was faster, neater, less ponderous. I liked the sounds on Incunabula
but not the way they were put together. Live, they'd done exactly what I
would have done if asked to remix everything ie. sped everything up 20
bpm and stuck whacking great basslines on everything! Well, it was a bit
more than that.
They really appeared to enjoy performing too, which helps. I can't really
tell you what they played, everything was remixed beyond recognition, but
like I said they retained a distinctive Autechre sound. Why oh why they
didn't release that live set as an LP I do not know...They really would
have made waves then...
After Autechre had finally played out after nearly an hour (I couldn't
have missed much), the 'host' Megadog geezer came out. Think he was the
same cheesey Londoner was at the Brixton do. Anyway he introed the DJ
who was to link Autechre and Eatstatic... This is what makes Megadog
unique for me.
Usually live acts at 'raves' are crap. They are on for about half an hour
and they disrupt the flow of the night. At a Megadog the reverse is true,
the night is based on live acts with Dj's filling in the occasional 20
mins in between acts. It kicks! Live stuff you can dance too. Consistently.
The DJ (who cheesey Londoner had introduced as being from Newcastle) was
pretty poor mixing wise but he played some good tunes and couldn't have
been on for more than 30 mins in any case... This was when I got my first
dose of MC Teabag. Yup that's Teabag. And my god if this guy isn't
several tealeaves short of a cupful.
jAmz summed him up pretty well. Obviously tripping his tits off, he
bounced around on the stage half singing, half rapping to the fairly
minimal dubby thumpy trancey acidy stuff the Dj was spinning. And he was
actually pretty damn good. And I HATE MCs. Everything was quite heavily
filtered or put through echo boxes or something, it all blended into the
music, quite a show, tho' the "smash the BNP" and "smash the criminal
justice bill" provided somewhat unecessary asides, kinda jerking you
back out to the real world.
Eatstatic followed the mad MC and the crap DJ from Newcastle. And they
were quite good too. I hadn't heard anything of their's before and had
had mixed reviews. Cheesey Londoner's claim that they were "simply the
best live band in the whole universe" may have been slightly over the
top, but fuck it, they came very close...
Their reputation as crowd stirers is well deserved. They rocked it for the
rest of the night, about 1hr 40 mins...Quite an odd mixture of stuff,
quite hard with acidy elements, as a rule, the odd breatbeat track to
stir up the crowd (yes, limited use of breaks can have a positive
effect!) and that was more or less it. Nothing totally memorable, but it
was all great to dance to (including a track with a Deep Forest sample,
whose been knocking Deep Forest? I love it ;).
They finished and cheesy Londoner came out and asked if we all wanted
more, yes we all dutifully cried, and off they went again. In fact they
played three more tracks, which I think surprised cheesey Londoner who
appeared to have only expected one.
Alas it all had to finish, at about 1am. "fuck the licensing laws" MC teabag
proclaimed and then mumbled something about people having to get together
to change things.. yeah yeah. DJ Micheal Dog finished off the night with
some fairly heavy duty trancey techno, for 30 mins after Eatstatic. He
could just about mix, but again all eyes were on the mad magnificent MC
Teabag who was now wailing on about Spacemen and Starships and stuff...
Errr....this is when my 5 senses metaphor thingy falls apart...
Taste: Would you buy flavoured smoke?
Touch: Well, as I said, one of my female friends was pharmaceutically
enhanced for the first time that night ;)
In all, excellent!
greg(gy)
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