Archive for the "Drum & Bass" Category
Konkrete Jungle 15: A Review
Posted: Tuesday - Feb 9th, 2010
Karl and I played Konkrete Jungle 15 last Friday.
Considering I hadn’t played out in a long while, I jumped at the chance when Saxon asked us to play. I enjoy playing out, and gigs where I can tag with Karl are opportunities I never say no to, given how similar our tastes and ideas about drum & bass are.
So we hit the spot with Mish and Threesixty in tow around 11 or so, Ramza and Ashes are on set. The kids were jumping around to what they were playing (what it was exactly I find kind of hard to explain), but I wasn’t really feeling it. There was a cartoonish quality to the tunes they were mashing together that really doesn’t do it for me. I put it like this: their set made me think about how Pendulum and Hazard tunes “feel” (not sound), kinda in-your-face and hyper. I can understand a set of that kind of music at 1am, but 11pm? If you’ve read my post about the Scruff gig, you know that for me 11pm’s a bit early for that sort of thing.
Karl and I get on deck at 11.30. As usual for sets at this hour, we decided to play twos: one of us plays two records, then the other plays two records. Twos are good because we both keep our energy up and neither of us can deviate too far from the overall direction of our set.
So Karl gets on and plays two tracks. I get on and play two tracks. Karl gets on, plays two, I get back on, play two. Most often, once we’re 20 minutes deep I’m usually starting to settle into the set and get comfortable. On this night that wasn’t the case. I don’t know if it was the system (I take a while to get used to DJ booths I’ve never played on before) or the venue or the crowd, but I had a hard time getting into our set, and into my mixes in particular. For some reason, it felt like all of my mixes were very slightly off… just enough to annoy me but not enough for most other people to notice. Thankfully, Karl pulled out “Warlock” by Phobia and that started to get me going.
Phobia – Warlock (2005) [Renegade Hardware]
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After that, things smoothed out. Our dancefloor never really thickened up, but I was having fun and that was all I’d been hoping for. I played the Nu:Tone remix of Shy FX’s “Feelings” and that went over pretty well, and then in my last two of the night I threw together some old favorites, mixing High Contrast’s remix of “Renegade Snares” into “Up All Night” by John B.
Shy FX – Feelings (Nu:Tone remix) (2008) [Digital Soundboy]
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John B – Up All Night (2000) [Metalheadz]
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Omni Trio – Renegade Snares (High Contrast remix) (2003) [Moving Shadow]
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After Karl and I got out of the booth, Shaun Doe and Dylan D went on. I hadn’t heard either of them play in ages, so I was pretty curious to see what they were going to come up with. It turned out that they played a bunch of old jump-up (from when jump-up was good) and some classics from the Urban Pressure days here in Ottawa. Most memorable parts of their set were Shaun playing “Can’t Punish Me” by Dom + Roland and Dylan playing “Trick of Technology” by Prisoners of Technology. The crowd seemed to dig their set quite a bit, which made me smile; seeing kids go off to real jump-up was refreshing.
Dom + Roland – Can’t Punish Me (2001) [Moving Shadow]
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Prisoners of Technology – Trick of Technology (1996) [Fresh Kutt]
Overall, I found the whole night interesting. Given the crowd’s overall lukewarm approach to most of the tunes I played, they kind of reinforced what I’ve known for a long time: my taste and popular taste when it comes to drum & bass are very very different. I bet if I’d played something like “No Future” (one of my favorite tunes from 2009) three quarters of the dancefloor would have hit the bar. You really have to hit kids on the head with over-the-top tunes to get their attention nowadays (”Up All Night” vs “Renegade Snares remix” is about as big a sledgehammer I can come up with), and tunes with subtlety don’t seem to have much place on dancefloors anymore. Unfortunate.
Instra:mental – No Future (2009) [NonPlus+]
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Still, I had a good time, despite these realizations. Thanks to Saxon and crew for inviting us to come play.
2 reviews of Marcus Intalex
Posted: Monday - Jan 25th, 2010
So yeah, a few of us went to Montreal Saturday night to check out Marcus Intalex. I’d been looking forward to the show for a long time, given that he’s one of my favorite tastemakers and all that sort of jazz; you can see my enthusiasm for this show in my previous post.
As I often do when I hit a show in another town and I don’t have to drive, I had a few drinks that night. Usually this works out quite well, adding to the feeling of “yes!” that I get whenever I go to see an excellent deejay in a foreign city. Unfortunately, Intalex’ performance didn’t turn out to be what I’d call “excellent”, so instead of being in a great mood I ended up pretty pissed off with just about everything. In fact, I got so annoyed that at one point I sat down in a corner of the club and wrote a drunken review.
I read it the next day, and was amused by the angst in it. I figured it’d be an excellent bit of writing to post on here… so here it is, complete with random meanderings and typos.
Review #1: Drunk
What a nugget of joy! Can you tell I was vexed? The second review’s a bit more… balanced.
Review #2: Sober
I think I set myself up for a fall for this show.
The Intalex is one of the few bigtime drum & bass deejays / producers I still follow religiously. I tend to snap up his new releases when they come out, and I download his excellent but infrequent Soul:ution podcast whenever it’s available on mp3. His taste in music has always been A-1 and as far as I can remember the quality of his tunes has never lagged for periods of any period of time. In summary, he’s one of the most consistent jungle guys out there.
I’m just not sure how strong a “live” deejay his is.
There’s a big difference between putting together an internet radio show and playing a live set to 300 people in a club. On the internet you can pretty much play what you want in whatever order you want; that seems to be the format for Soul:ution Radio, and it works out great. If you’re playing a headlining slot in a live setting, you have to cater more to the audience, and make sure they’re dancing.
My major problem with Intalex’ set was that I think he catered too much. He got them dancing, and once they were dancing, he played the same kind of tune that got them dancing for the rest of the night.
As a deejay and as somebody who likes going out on the floor and dancing, I look for two things in a live deejay set above all else: clean mixing and variety. If you don’t have both of those locked down I’m not interested. Intalex’ mixing was just fine (as I’d hope it would be, given that he’s been playing out for years), but he was brutal when it came to variety. All I heard was rollers, all night long. I have nothing against rollers, they have their time and place in every deejay set and Intalex played some excellent ones (”Entropy” among them). However, as soon as I’d heard 20 minutes of the same kind of beat I started getting annoyed… and when they went on for over an hour and a half I was livid and anxious to get out of there.
Marcus Intalex & ST Files – Entropy
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I suppose a lot of my disappointment is my own fault; if I hadn’t hyped the show to myself as much as I did I probably wouldn’t have been as upset at how it turned out. Still, I can’t help but think that he could have stepped outside of the box a bit more and challenged his audience a bit.
The night wasn’t a complete loss, though. Our host and friend Generic tagged a fun set with Corey K, the event’s promoter. G even played a tune that he and Threesixty had thrown together over the weekend. It sounded great and the crowd responded to it well, which put a smile on my face.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if I’d been cheated by the headliner. Did he play safe because he was in Montreal, a city that Generic described as “not ready” for hearing music that’s a bit more challenging? Or is he just not that good of a live deejay? It’s funny to say it, but I’ll have to see him play in another city to know for sure.
Roadtrip!
Posted: Friday - Jan 22nd, 2010
Sure, it’s only to Montreal, but who gives a shit?
I’m a big Marcus Intalex fan. He’s an excellent producer, he runs one of the best drum & bass labels on the planet, and he’s always pushed top-notch, forward-looking music. He runs one of the best d&b-centric internet radio shows out there, Soul:ution Radio. He also speaks his mind and isn’t afraid to call out veteran producers that push cookie-cutter tunes that pander to jungle’s mainstream in order to line their bank accounts.
The Intalex is playing in Montreal tomorrow, bringing my couple of weeks of celebrating my birthday to a close. He’s one of the few drum & bass people left on my “see this deejay before you die” list. Me and a bunch of the lads are looking forward to hearing him, and you should too.
He’s playing @ Club Lambi (4465 St-Laurent), and cover is $10 advance. Local stalwarts Corey K and Generic are tagging a set, and DJ Hosta and Bus will be tagging one as well.
And for some reason, if you’ve never heard of Marcus Intalex, here’s a short tribute mix that Karl put together for his radio show Futurhythm this week.
Download: Karl Haze – Marcus Intalex Tribute (Futurhythm, 2010.01.20)
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tracklist:
- Da Intalex – What You Gonna Do? (Flex)
- Marcus Intalex – Refreshed (Soul:R)
- Mist.i.cal – Love Thing (???)
- Mist.i.cal feat. Ras T Weed – Mistical Solution (Soul:R)
- M.I.S.T. – Warp 1 (Soul:R)
- Marcus Intalex – Skizm (Soul:R)
- Marcus Intalex – Zumbar (Soul:R)
- M.I.S.T. – Outerspace (Soul:R)
- Mist.i.cal – Inside My Head (Soul:R)
- Solid State – Just A Vision (Marcus Intalex & ST Files Remix) (Renegade)
And here’s my all-time favorite Intalex tune that Karl forgot to include. Tsk tsk, dude.
Marcus Intalex & ST Files – Love & Happiness
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Schematic Mix (Best of 2009)
Posted: Saturday - Dec 19th, 2009
Sweet, my first real post.
Given the way the world of drum & bass has evolved (I use that term as loosely as possible) over the last few years, I’ve been keeping up with the music a lot less than I used to since 2006 or so. I still follow certain artists (Marcus Intalex, Doc Scott, Flight, dBridge, Instra:mental and Calibre in particular) but some some material still slides through my fingers. That’s where best of year end lists from my friends come in; they fill in the gaps left behind by the big tastemakers and ensure I haven’t missed out on too much.
Once local boy Dan Schematic just put out our crew’s first “Best of” mix for this year, “Boh Ho Ho”. He hits a bunch of different parts of the drum & bass spectrum on this one and (with the exception of the mix title) keeps the cheese out.
It’s definitely worth a download and listen. You’ll find the link after the tracklist.
- Alix Perez – 1984 [Shogun]
- Rockwell – Underpass [Critical]
- Instra:Mental – Watching You [Nonplus]
- Sabre – Original Sin feat. Teure [Critical]
- Random Movement & Mixmaster D.O.C. – Rattled System [Integral]
- Alix Perez – I’m Free [Shogun]
- Schematic – The Gutter [Unsigned]
- SpectraSoul – Organizer [Critical]
- Kemo & Lynx – Deez Breaks feat. Henree [Soul:R]
- Logistics – Murderation [Hospital]
- State of Mind & Trei – Dirt [SOM]
- Noisia – Last Look [Metalheadz]
- Netsky – Midnight Express [Spearhead]
- Calibre – Life [Signature]
- Alix Perez – Forsaken feat. Peven Everett & SpectraSoul [Shogun]
- SpectraSoul – I Was 10 [Shogun]
- Noisia – Stigma [Vision]
- Schematic – Fiction [Unsigned]
- Noisia – Crank [Vision]
- Quadrant – Whisper [Fokuz]
- Ed Rush & Optical – Chubrub [Virus]
- Die – Clear Skyz (Break Remix) [Clear Skyz]
- Break – ReTech [Symmetry]
- State of Mind & PNC – City On Fire [SOM]
- S.P.Y. – Sunship [Spearhead]
- Brother – Deep Thread [Fokuz]
- Calibre – Half Full [Signature]
- Mutt – Over [Inside]
- Bcee – Out In The Cold [Influenza Media]
- Calibre – What To Do In These Times [Signature]
- Lisa Shaw – Cherry (Schematic DNB Remix) [Bootleg Dub]
- Spinlock – Do You Need Me [Stride]
- DJ Fresh – Heavyweight [Digital Soundboy]
- Dom & Roland – Jungle Beast [Dom & Roland]
- Nero – Do You Wanna [Viper]
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