"Welcome to Blech: Population - 120"
Thus spake one of the highly desirable posters at this opening night of a
series promoted by Warp at Sheffield University Union (of all places).
With a full-strength Warp posse and the choicest ambassadors of the
forever nascent Sheffield scene, there was a good atmosphere to
complement the satisfyingly loud PA.
First up Andy (I think) from Plaid, on an electro-hiphop-checkno
mission. Yes - 808 overload. He did a great mix with In Sync's 'Storm'
and later the Taxi theme tune. A Spacetime Continuum tune from Emit
Ecaps sounded even more Black Doggy than ever - quite a compliment. On
second thoughts it might have been Ed - I'm sure Greg can correct me on this.
Next up was Ashton, a Sheffield DJ associated with 10 Denk records and
Wax Lyrical. He provided a pretty well paced d&b assault - the only tune
I recognised and could put a name to was one of the remixes of
Nicolette's 'We Never Know'. Top stuff. Under the threat of severe
censure from g303 I even ventured to dance in my own idiosyncratic
fashion. As the man said, "It all makes so much sense now".
( On Friday 17th May Autechre (amongst others) are DJing at the Arches in
Sheffield if anyone is interested. )
The night before Orbital played at the Octagon here, supported by Mr.
Paradinas himself (I'd foregone the chance to go to LTJ Bukem's Logical
Progression tour, never having seen Mu-ziq (or Mu-siq as the union had it)
before). He opened with a track I first heard on Disengage about a year
ago - very much like a remix of Megaphonk. After that it was industrial
jungle, set off by the trademark sublime melody lines. We heard a few
bars of PHI*1700 (U/V) which then mutated into a rampant d&b monster. Yum
yum - now which label is all this going to come out on?
Orbital took the stage to the strains of John Barry, and produced the
sort of slick, incredibly competent show you'd expect from them.
Unfortunately they "treated" us to three versions of The Box (a tune I
quite like, but not that much) but made up for this with Satan (or is it
Omen? - anyway, the one with the Butthole Surfers sample) and some
brown-album-era corkers. It's easy to forget how important Orbital have
been in introducing 'dance' music to a wider audience and the strength of
their back catalogue. To my mind there are 3 really good tunes on _In
Sides_, but that's more than _Snivilisation_ managed....
thanks to g303 for enduring my spotterishness at both these events
adam