Hullo All,
last Tuesday (Finland's Independence Day or 6th of December) saw the
second RePHReSH in Finland, and what an event it was! Grant
Wilson-Claridge spinning, Richard D. James spinning and playing choice
cuts from his laptop and Ovuca throwing a mean set from his. Definitely a
night to remember. The place was expectedly packed. Grant started off with
a set of variable-age acid, techno, breakbeat and other stuff, Outlander's
``Vamp'' and others included - very wicked. After him Ovuca started to
create real mayhem with his brand of distorted and psychotic jungle and
breaks to which the crowd promptly responded by filling the floor and
starting to wonder where the music was coming from since no-one was behind
the decks - Aleksi was sitting on the floor behind the stage with his
laptop, twisting and tweaking the sound to rather extreme proportions.
I could identify a couple of tracks from ``King Stacey'', otherwise his
set was unreleased material (or that's what I thought, I couldn't put my
finger on many of the tracks).
After Ovuca, Richard opened his set with something that sounded vaguely
like his own material, though I could not identify it as something that
had been released. Distorted beats, eerie string layers very much alike to
SAW II, gradually building up to blinding and ear-murdering breakbeat and
jungle. The intensity of the music was unbelievable, I haven't danced so
much in a while. After a while of relentless breaks, he began a total
mutilation of Michael Jackson's ``Bad'', cutting it up like a piece of
pork, creating a whole new experience out of the track. The crowd was
absolutely ecstatic over the track, everyone was screaming and laughing
and dancing like mad. But no, we weren't to be spared. After murdering
``Bad'' Richard put on such an onslaught of twisted, dark jungle and
breakbeat that the crowd started to get a bit sparser on the dancefloor,
furiously slapping one record after another and heating up the room to the
temperature of finnish sauna. Suddenly he dropped off to V/VM's remix of
Chris de Burgh's ``Lady In Red'' and the crowd just stopped and gawked as
if Pamela Lee was bouncing up and down naked behind the decks - followed
by a new remix of one of his earlier tracks (the name escapes me). Then,
the breaks and jungle continued again. We had to leave a bit early to
get to the afterparty, but at that point Richard started to play slower,
melodic but still very gritty and dirty (rhythm-wise) material - a shame,
I would've wanted to hear exactly something like that after losing several
litres of sweat trying to keep up with the aggressive stuff he played.
I have been a RePHLeX fan since 1993, so I wouldn't have missed this
event for the world. Before and after their gigs, I got the chance to chat
with both Grant and Richard for a while and persuaded Richard to sign a
few of his releases on RePHLeX. We discussed some of their future plans,
and though rumours might tell you otherwise, Richard told me that he has
some new material coming out rather soon. There will also be a new album
from Ovuca, more mellow material. Also, RePHLeX will release their first
compilation next year. Both Richard and Grant were nice blokes, and fun as
well. The evening was quite the high-point of my existence, both guys
commending me of my RePHLeX collection I had with me (I'm missing only the
impossible or unreleased ones and have quite many on both vinyl and CD,
but everything possible on vinyl).
The afterparty was a lounge-type deal, with some music played by yours
truly and a few others. The RePHLeX posse dropped by for about an hour but
then left for their hotel since they were just too tired to stay and play
any more. I chatted some more with the guys and bid farewell to them when
they left. I hope I get another chance to see them perform and to meet
them again.
A very, very wicked evening for me, as you might guess. I even got a
photo-op with Richard and got a couple of snaps of him and me with my
digital camera, so I got everything I could possibly get from that night.
I have to thank the katastro.fi people for organising the best party of
my life (this far). The same people organised the first Ph1nland RePHReSH
around this time last year - a very respectful feat. Also, The
katastro.fi-produced visuals at the event were fabulous. Thank you all!
Now I'll just get back to admiring the weird messes of lines Richard
scrawled on my records as his signatures. No-one would probably believe
that they are his signatures _but_ the scribbles are all identical on each
sleeve...
Cheers,
--
nuutti-iivari meriläinen gordon at diversion dot org
http colon slash slash www dot diversion dot org slash
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