Hi there everybody,
I woke up at 11 this morning, quite early considering I'd been at the
Big Day Out from 11am-11pm yesterday listening to and dancing to some
brilliant music. Before I get on to the highlight, I spent most of the
day at the "Ear" stage, where various experimental electronic groups and
DJs were playing. It was in amongst all these trees with fake turf to
sit on and groove (or stand on and dance) and fantastic quadraphonic
sound... the best was my friends DJs Sub Bass Snarl. They did an amazing
set starting off with the Top of the Pops sample from that JAMs CD "1987
- What The Fuck's Going On?" (um All You Need Is Love I think?) and then
into electronica and mad break-beat/Drum'n'Bass stuff, with Seb (Yellow
Peril) cutting in breaks from other stuff with fantastic precision,
reminding me of stuff off the Squarepusher album (is it Dimotane Co?)
Anyway I had a great time.
Another highlight (well kinda) was a group calling themselves "Toy
Death" who set up a whole lot of kid's toys (tiny casio-type keyboard,
various ray-guns, toy guirars (actually keyoards) and other
plastic-contained electronics) with a guy on a mixer behind. I don't
know how much of the soudns were tiggered by the toys, some bits were
definitely loops and stuff. They all wore rubbery masks and AC/DC
T-shirts and parodied the rock-gig thing rather well.
Anyhow, then into the Boiler Room for me (after a stop at the main
stages for my favourite Australian indie rock band (or is it
girlie-pop?), The Clouds, sorry non-idm reference). The sound was a lot
more hardcore in there, even the usually more organic (whatever that
means) Djs Gemma & Seymour doing good but very hard sets. They usually
sound a lot more like Sub Bass Snarl. Everyone in Sydney should listen
to Sub Bass Snarl on 2SER Tues 1-2:30 and 2FO (Gemma & Seymour) Wed
1-2:30. And listen to FBi 96.9 the rest of the time...
Cyclob (or is it Cylob?) did a _very very_ strange set indeed, which
managed to rather successfully clear most of the room :) but I enjoyed
it for its weirdness... Undanceable on the whole though. After a
similarly hardcore (if I'm using the right term), and to me therefore
rather boring set from DJ Grant (sorry, just a bit repetitive, I like
the "Intelligent" in Intelligent Dance Music), we had... Mr Richard D
James. And I was right up the front watching his every move. Not that
there was much to see. Just a laptop computer on the floor connected to
what I guess was a sampler or something (a keyboardless device with
buttons and knobs) and a mixer, next to which Richard lay on his side
and stared intently into the screen, sometimes doing things or twiddling
knobs...
Erm yes well nothing much to see on stage, until that is they brought
out those two big cuddly Aphex-monsters from, Ithink , the Donkey
Rhubarb video (I haven't had the pleasure of seeing _any_ of the videos
except of the Warpnet site!) That was kinda fun, and one of them decided
to jump the fence into the audience right at the point where I was
standing. So I got to push him/her/it around a bit... Meanwhile Richard
proceeded to totally ignore them (as well as the audience as usual) the
whole time. Of course this was all affectation, but I got the feeling
that we were sort-of listening to remixes of his work played live by a
computer _in close proximity to Aphex_, and that and the fact that we
were surrounded by Aphex Twin fans constituted the live gig aspect
entirely. Still, great gig :)
Well, I might not be a lot of joy with the set because although I have
all the albums save Classics and most of the EPs, I don't always
remember the names of the individual tracks. So anyway, he started off
with something from SAW I, but with a big beat over it. I don't think
I'd call it jungle _or_ DnB, but even the wild stuff wasn't _really_...
Um I'll try and remember what else I can. The whole mix generally in the
Boiler Room is always characterised by very loud drums etc somewhat
overpowering the musical elements. Is this the usual story at dance gigs
like this? The Ear stage had truly fantastic sound the whole time.
Anyway, we had a great version of Laughable Butane Bob off Hangable Auto
Bulb 1 (yes those extremely rare anagrams of Analogue Bubblebath, I only
knew because it's on Blechsdottir... anyone wanna sell me a copy of
H.A.B. 1&2?(bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha)). That was just incredible. And then a
sample saying something like "Please give us a Snarerush!" and into the
snarerush "mix" on Girl/Boy EP (or was this later? The order's confused
in my mind). And by the way, for anyone still wondering, Girl/Boy is
_definitely_ a 45- the live version of the original song was even faster
than that on the CD! It was tremendous- ending with a long passage of
just the strings(*), going into, erm, I think something else off SAW I?
Forgive my imprecision. There was also another track off Richard D James
album, and some stuff I didn't recognize, either because of the beats
being so loud or because it was new or on something I don't have.
Anyhow, a great time was had by all, although the last track wasn't
terribly interesting, and was dampened by a dickhead loser next to me
yelling at the next DJ (Sugar Ray) before the last song "C'mon Ray!"
Yeah mate well if you're bored there's no need to be so offensive to the
act actually on (I don't believe Aphex heard but still... Did you mister
Richard@afx.idiscover.co.uk?)
Well that's my gushing review. Hope it wasn't too stupid and too long.
Next we'll have my reviews of Urmur Bile Trax and Avantgardism. I've
just got to get the damn things first!
Peter.
(*)[Speaking of strings, for that person earlier, I don't think these
are even string samples, even the pizzicato-like bits... I'm a cellist,
I should know! And sorry, Pachelbel's Kanon is much better than the
silly sample in FSOL's Domain; I say this even though I'm an FSOL junkie
:)]
--
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Homepage:
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email: raven@cia.com.au
shell: peterh@alpha.maths.unsw.edu.au
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