Another trip to that out of the way Northern techno mecca (not been for a
while) produced some interesting results.
It was the Orbit's 3rd Birthday party and they'd laid on a rather curious
line up:
David Holmes
Luke Slater
Bandulu (Live)
Wishmountain Plays (Live)
What drew my attention was Wishmountain, I immediately had visions of him
being torn to shreds in an bloody frenzy as the sped up, e'd up Orbit
massive grew tired of some obscure looped sample, the Orbit crowd have a
very short attention span and if it doesn't "fuckin bang it man" within
about a picosecond there are some very unhappy bunnies.
Anyway, got there to a horrific 1000+ queue, yes at 7:30 on a
sorching hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of a black and wasted
Yorkshire town. The lads jumped out the car, into the queue somewhere
while I went off and parked (hey all night security! very good.)
It turned out they'd rather usefully (and accidently) junped in a coach
queue so we got in within 4 minutes. That was a good start to the night.
Mark Turner, one of the resident DJs was typically going hell for
leather with 140BPMish hard as nails techno, all pretty nondescript tho,
the number of people who were already cabbaged at this time with nearly 5
hours to go was quite remarkable, dancefloor was fulll by 8:15. John
Berry the 'top' resident came on and did his spliff balancing act and
mixed a few records, again hard as nails and fast. All good stuff.
The lasers were out and they had a new set of wappy projections the "Dumb
and Gummer" John Major one was my favourite but the distorted faces were
suitably horrible. The stage was covered wtih bit's of equipment, and
some guy was tinkering with a Sony DATman (I want one!). I found a rather
helpful poster with the 'programme'. Wishmountain was due on at twelve. But
only for 15 mins. So he might survive then.
So I waits till 12. Did a bit of dancing in the meantime. Then on strolls
a tax inspector. Wearing what looked like a Paul Smith high cut suit, white
and black wing tip brogues and carrying an old battered leather suitcase.
He adjusts a microphone stand. He wanders over to the DATman. Casually
prods it and waits for Berry to play he last, last, last record.
He then strolls back over to the DATman. Presses play, whopps up the
levels on a mixing desk and wanders back to the mic. Reaches into the
briefcase. Produces a jam jar full of biscuits and proceeds to play it.
The maddest thing I've ever seen. This guy, in this fuck off 3 piece suit
and brogues, playing a jam jar with just this ever so slightly manic look
on his face, in front of about a thousand nutty sweaty (I was already
soaked) ravers. Wow. And then the beats kicked in.
What I whould have given for that DAT. It had some of the wildest
funkiest, hardiest most melodic beats I've heard, very very difficult to
catagorise, Aphexy madness, mu-ziq distortion, Doggy melody, and such a
chunky funkyness. When the beats arrived Wishmountion had an epileptic
fit. Or appeared to.
This poor jam jar was having it's lid banged, sides tapped, biscuits
shaken, every drip of noise was being wrung out of it. Eventually it
broke as he banged it's glass lid, spraying glass on the stage, this
momentarily fazed him (I'd figured it would shatter after 2mins, so all
credit to him that he made it last 4), but that track was finishing anyway.
Off he scampered, quick prod of the DATman, fuck, more amazing noise,
this time he produced a piece of paper and some scissors from the
briefcase. Yes, this man played a bit of paper with scissors at the Orbit.
Mad. And it was the way he was doing it too, earnestly showing the paper
and the cuts to the crowd, real showmanship, all the time doing this foot
swivelling, frantic, gurning dance. What appeared to be random cuts,
eventually turned out - when he opened the fanfold paper - to spell out
THE ORBIT. Impressive.
We then got treated to a transistor radio, which he turned on and off,
whipped the tuner up and down, zic zwish and banged against the
microphone stand. The man's a loony. He played something else but I've
forgotton, it might have been a pair of spoons, I kind of lost focus,
distracted by the music crowd and his dancing. Oh I think he played a
Parker pen at one point, snickity snick.
At first the crowd just stood and watched, bemused, maybe embarrassed,
but as the beats got hotter and harder everyone got into it. Even David
Holmes had a bit of a wriggle. But most of the 'cool' people on the stage
just watched with barely suppressed smiles. Half the attraction for me
was seeing everyone else's reaction.
He was on for about 20 mins in all, it seemed much longer, the music
never stopped or dropped. Quality stuff. Nothing even vaguely like the
Evolution comp stuff. Wild. Exhausted and sweating he stopped the DATman
and took a bow. Stunning, involving, electric performance. Nobody had
the heart to tell him his mic had been off for the entire performance.
Was good enough as was. Actually I wondered if it hadn't been deliberate,
all those nasty clang's and clonks would have interfered with the music,
it was more I think to give an impression.
David Holmes eventually got the decks plugged in and played a satisfactory
if unspectactular, mildly acidic, I've seen him do better, set. Bandulu
came and went. I think they only brought one tune with them, but not to
disappoint they played it all night. Their ridiculous MC (E17 backwards
cap for fucks sake) over did it as only MCs can. Horrible, brash, boring.
I tried to escape (and rehydrate) in the bar.
Luke Slater appeared and played a technically perfect set (bar one
glitch) for 2 hours. Hard fast techno. And I'm sorry, it bored me
shitless. Totally bland stuff, no highs, lows, nothing. No acid. Just
boring bass. We left with half an hour to go. I wanted more Wishmountain.
g303
greg The WARP Web Site
3 0 3
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/~n264671/wap-indx.html