Well, the Warp Lighthouse Party last night was absolutely ridiculous.
There's just something amazing about seeing a few thousand people pack a
venue to see music like this. According to the paper here, the party
sold out the first day in London, so I wonder how big it would've gotten
if they hadn't been limited by the venue.
The venue was absolutely awesome. It was in the docklands area of
London, which is a really awesome area. Apparenlty it was growing
really quickly during the economic boom of the late 80's but then when
the recession set in, there were just a ton of brand new buildings left
empty. Now that the economy is picking up again, stuff is actually
starting to move there (i.e. the Millenium Dome) and they are putting in
more public transportation methods (like the Docklands Light Rail) to
promote commerce.
The venue was actually two buildings (neither of which were a
lighthouse, though it was right next to the Trinity Buoy Wharf
lighthouse) which were situated right along the water. A very cool
venue, if you ask me.
The soundsystems were both very good, although the one in the main room
was annoying at times because of how the room was set up; it was
basically a big room with partitions in the middle that each came in
about 1/3rd of the way, meaning there was only a small opening, which
restricted access and cut a lot of the sound (even though they separate,
albeit smaller stacks, in the other half).
The Skam room was pretty good, though I didn't see anything that
terribly exciting in it. There were a lot more DJs in there than I
expected (which was true for both rooms). The sound was very good and
they had fairly cool visuals on the projector screens too.
The Warp room really didn't keep me that interested for the first
portion either. I was just kind of wandering around between the two
listening to a lot of music that I wasn't really that into. Don't get
me wrong, were this a normal rave I would've freaked out if I would've
heard this stuff, but in light of the lineup, a lot of the bands just
weren't really up to par.
Boards of Canada played a damn good set in the main room but it was so
packed in there that it made it not nearly as enjoyable as it could have
been.
Autechre played a bit later and they were pretty good, though they
played a little more Gescom-ish than Autechre-ish, or maybe I'm just
smoking crack. It was more DSP-based and not that melodic, but still
enjoyable.
Around this time, it started getting a little less packed, which was
nice.
Then Bogdan went on.
Now, I like Bogdan's music a lot and I've seen him live before and he
was good...
But this set was absolutely fucking amazing. He played, by far, the
best set of the night. He played pretty hard (especially in relation to
everybody before him) and it was amazing. He got an excellent crowd
reaction (tons of people screaming and dancing) and really played well
to the crowd. He was jumping all over the stage and screaming and it
was fucking ridiculous. Amazing.
Four people from the crowd jumped up on the stage and danced and nobody
cared, it was great. Craziness is always a good thing, especially after
a long night of wankful chin-stroking. I really think the crowd was
waiting for something they could dance to after a very laid back
evening.
After Bogdan got done, Chris Cunningham went on and played an OK set.
NO THIS WASN'T APHEX FUCKING TWIN. Everybody thought it was and
everybody kept telling me it was, but I was standing right up front and
I watched Aphex Twin stand in front of his turntables and laptop with no
records spinning, just waiting for his turn.
Richard did do a bit of laptop stuff to apply effects and play some
tracks of his into the set, but he wasn't playing yet. Chris played
harder stuff and I really liked it. Some really good jungle tracks and
such- just the kind of stuff I'm into. Very nice.
When Chris was finally done (about 5:50), Richard finally started
playing. He only got through one mix before the cops/security/guysinuglycoats
started making the motions for him to turn off the music. He tried
ignoring them, but finally they just came over and shut off his
turntables.
Overall, it was a fucking excellent night though. I'd like to hope
that, based on Bogdan, Chris and Richard's sets, maybe Rephlex will
start to move into the "harder" stuff because that would be excellent.
Anyway, hi to everybody that I talked to (xdrquinnx & crew, marumari,
guy on Virgin, etc).
That's all.
--
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