Went to the Anjunadeep Tour at Verboten, Brooklyn, this Saturday. Jody Wisternoff, Cubicolor, Yotto and SR Serge were playing.
Doors opened at 11, got there at 11:30. Was able to find parking a few blocks away, always a pleasure. SR Serge was playing a surprisingly uplifting set for an opener, melodic house in the Anjunadeep style of a few years ago. Cubicolor took the reins at midnight, and his set was a bit deeper and slower-paced. There were parts where stuff tended to drag, the energy level flatlined, but overall he played some good stuff... His own "Got This Feeling" being the highlight.
Then, Jody took the decks and the place got PACKED. The last time I was at Verboten was for Danny Howells last winter, and it seemed smaller than I remembered it. The main dancefloor was packed in like sardines and the room was hot as hell... one girl apparently had a heat stroke in there. This December has been ridiculously hot in NY, I think it was 60 degrees this past Saturday, so that didn't help matters. Eventually, they turned on the air conditioning in the club and that made things much better.
Jody's set started off melodic (Nora En Pure - Come With Me) and eventually built up into a set of peaktime bangers, such as the Chicane remix of "The Bridge", and some big-bassline stuff that had callbacks to speed garage. Toward the later part of his set, things got twisted, with intense acid and all sorts of trippy techno and house. Then he ended with something reminiscent of 80's freestyle. His set was definitely the highlight of the night for me.
Yotto started at 3:30AM, and he was the one I was most curious about. Haven't heard a set from him before, and I really liked his track "Slowly". So, he opened with that one but then took things into a more big-room techno (Paul Kalkbrenner - Feed Your Head - Kolsch Mix) direction for a bit. Thankfully, the dancefloor started opening up a bit by this time. By 4:15, I was getting real tired and knowing I have an hour drive back home, my friend and I decided to head off.
So overall, I had an absolute blast, but I find nowadays I spend more time sitting down and hanging out than dancing. Being 33 and with a girlfriend who doesn't care for this 'scene', it's not too often I go clubbing, so it was a nice change of pace. Verboten is great but I think they overbooked this one a bit.
Hows the sound in Verboten? Someone said it was better than Output. I consider Output to be one of the best systems ever. Second only to Sound Factory 99 to 2003
Dec-18-2015 17:48
SYSTEM-J
IDKFA.
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: Manchester
quote:
Originally posted by Mr Game+Watch
Jody's set started off melodic (Nora En Pure - Come With Me) and eventually built up into a set of peaktime bangers, such as the Chicane remix of "The Bridge", and some big-bassline stuff that had callbacks to speed garage. Toward the later part of his set, things got twisted, with intense acid and all sorts of trippy techno and house. Then he ended with something reminiscent of 80's freestyle. His set was definitely the highlight of the night for me.
I saw him a couple of years ago on NYE and he was throwing in a lot of really gnarly bassline and garage shit. Not the smoothest DJ but definitely very ballsy, especially for someone known these days for making some pretty bubblegum house.
Speaking of which... I know I said I wasn't going out anymore but as NYE was on a Thursday I decided to throw caution to the wind. There was some terrible trance night on in Leeds but the third room was billed as "future house, progressive and techno" with Charlie May headlining, and it was the same promoter who put on Wisternoff a couple of years back when I had a lot of fun.
It turned out to be a pretty disastrous night, chiefly because the third room struggled to fill up all night (as, I suppose, is the nature of third rooms at all but the most over-sold events). When the clock struck midnight there were about 10 people in there, and while it filled up for most of Charlie May's set there were never more than 50-60 heads in at any point. May himself played for 2.5 hours and his set was largely unremarkable for all but 0.5 of those hours. He was mostly playing very tough tech-house and techno with the occasional more sparkly progressive track thrown in. His mixing style was relatively basic - strictly mix intro on outro, cut the bass on both channels and slam it back in when the moment is right. This style of mixing means you never really get tracks working together and his programming seemed fairly random, not building in any particular direction.
In the last 30 minutes he unexpectedly started lamping out some excellent percussive techno and showed he was actually capable of building momentum and getting tunes to follow logically after all. His last tune was Maceo Plex - Solar Detroit, which got a fairly lukewarm reception on TA when someone made a thread. Coming at the end of the techno it sounded absolutely massive to my ears, a suitably euphoric and epic ending note for this kind of techy set. This strong finish earned him a hard-won 7/10 from me.
Next up came Steve Arnold, a jobbing and fairly well-respected supporting cast member on the UK progressive/trancey circuit who also manages some fairly big trance DJs. He also played on NYE two years ago and that night laid down some classic prog (Breeder, James Holden et al) which had me grinning from ear to ear. So I had him down as a fairly safe pair of hands for a 90 minute set. It didn't really pan out like that.
He started out playing some Drumcode-style techno - his second tune was Meeting Of Minds by Jel Ford, for example. I have defended this kind of techno in the past on TA (and I do love that Jel Ford track) but I have to admit it sounded rhythmically one-dimensional compared to what May had been playing. Now things started to go wrong. The already-thin crowd started dissipating quite rapidly, and soon the room was down to about 20 people. In an unwise move, he went from Drumcode techno to big silly trance, and promptly emptied out the remaining dregs of the dancefloor, myself included. It was only 3am at this point and I was nowhere near fit for sleep, but I shit-canned it and walked back to my flat.
The take home? Don't ever rely on the third room of an event for the sole source of your good music.
If you enjoy any of these sets and want to hear me live, I'll be playing a 2 hour progressive trance set at Basing House in Shoreditch, London on 11th October.
I'm also a resident at our bi-monthly party Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/
Jan-03-2016 02:57
DOOMBOT
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Sep 2004
Location:
quote:
Originally posted by wotyzoid
I went to this party in brooklyn called blk market last friday, it was at warehouse i had been to before for Clovis, Bill Patrick and Priku, it's weird you walk in and there's this long lit up stairway and a door to your right, you walk through that door and that's a big storage room where the party is with the shut garage door leading on to the street to your right as you walk in. bar, coat check, a couple of john's (with a really big line/cue at one point in the party i might add), proper brooklyn grit. The line up was Fahad, the blk market resident, Eats Everything and Sven Weisemann.
It was fun I enjoyed it, stayed until about 7am. Eats' set was choppy, he played plastic dreams somewhat early to salvage some choppyness i feel, he played the bangers he had to play, played some new york house towards the end. I think he really tried, but it just wasn't clicking, and I say this having seen Eats absolutely destroy cielo, probably the best set I've seen there. He played until about 5/530, Sven Weisemann comes and always drops the hammer. It was my third time seeing this kid and it kind of blows my mind how detroit school he is, fader slams left and right, no fade ins, backspins. He played the beginning chords of 'Rej' at one point, but just that, onto something else. So quick. He dropped this as I assume the sun was coming up outside and it was nice:
Fahad's set was my favorite, good warm ups always take the cake for me, he's a brainy and calculated guy with the tracks he plays as i see it but a solid understanding of rhythms and grooves. he ended with a new Sascha Dive he told me. he told me the name but I couldn't hold on to it. I believe it was this:
either way, bomba^, and totally like the vibes he built up to right before Eats went on. I'm almost positive it was this record, either this or the b-side. all i know is that it was more than appropriate. Good party. blk market rarely disappoints to be honest. if you're in new york, go check it out.
If you enjoyed blk market, also check out Resolute, if you haven't already. Both groups are doing it proper in NYC.
___________________
James Morris (DOOMBOT) and Mark Anthony techno/tech-house mix 10-17-2009
Saw Ben Klock last week - was as disappointing as i feared it would be.
It was all set up, huge crowd you could hardly move on the dance floor. Started off with a few heavy ones but then it just went nowhere, the odd big build and the crowd really wanted it to take off but it just never really did imo
I think its partly my feeling towards techno at the moment as well, i think its gone jaded, im done with it for a while, want to try to go to more progressive, deeper stuff and see if the vibe is any better
To be fair to Klock, he's playing 3,4 gigs a weekend now and it's just not possible to deliver every time, especially when you're playing short two hour sets. It's kind of paradox, someone like Klock got famous for playing long resident sets and now people expect him to create the same kinda vibe playing these peaktime sets.
I did Berghain's NYE again this year, fantastic party as usual. With all the hype and the tourists it really shouldn't work but somehow it feeds of these things and ends up even better. The vibe on the first of january was 5/5, both incredibly relaxed and energetic at the same time. Anthony Paraosole played some really nice groovy stuff, sort of late 90s US influenced and got the room into a really nice vibe. Then Kobosil came on and really just turned things upside down with super rave-y techno. Distorted kicks, saw-y rave basslines, raw drums, just more extreme with each track. It wasn't exactly my style but man did it work. He knew exactly what to do to get things boiling. I've rarely seen that much energy in a club. Absolute madness, it was like straight out of that cave-rave scene from the matrix.
The second of january was nice as well, lots of space during the day. Etapp Kyle and Blind Observatory played some solid sets, but I've heard better from them. DJ Pete just went all out, going up to 140s BPM near the end. I couldn't keep up the whole time, but had a lot of fun dancing to killer 90s techno classics for a while.
Originally posted by Woony
To be fair to Klock, he's playing 3,4 gigs a weekend now and it's just not possible to deliver every time, especially when you're playing short two hour sets. It's kind of paradox, someone like Klock got famous for playing long resident sets and now people expect him to create the same kinda vibe playing these peaktime sets.
For a 2 hour set the recipe is simple - just fucking horse it out. I understand that these guys like to build long sets but why take the gig then in the first place? If youre gonna do the gig then tailor your style to the set-time, he must get sent a tonne of tunes every week, it shouldnt be a problem
Originally posted by Woony
To be fair to Klock, he's playing 3,4 gigs a weekend now and it's just not possible to deliver every time, especially when you're playing short two hour sets. It's kind of paradox, someone like Klock got famous for playing long resident sets and now people expect him to create the same kinda vibe playing these peaktime sets.
I did Berghain's NYE again this year, fantastic party as usual. With all the hype and the tourists it really shouldn't work but somehow it feeds of these things and ends up even better. The vibe on the first of january was 5/5, both incredibly relaxed and energetic at the same time. Anthony Paraosole played some really nice groovy stuff, sort of late 90s US influenced and got the room into a really nice vibe. Then Kobosil came on and really just turned things upside down with super rave-y techno. Distorted kicks, saw-y rave basslines, raw drums, just more extreme with each track. It wasn't exactly my style but man did it work. He knew exactly what to do to get things boiling. I've rarely seen that much energy in a club. Absolute madness, it was like straight out of that cave-rave scene from the matrix.
The second of january was nice as well, lots of space during the day. Etapp Kyle and Blind Observatory played some solid sets, but I've heard better from them. DJ Pete just went all out, going up to 140s BPM near the end. I couldn't keep up the whole time, but had a lot of fun dancing to killer 90s techno classics for a while.
It's like, why do I even bother going out at all if I don't live in BERLIN?
Jan-05-2016 21:18
Woony
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Sep 2009
Location: Berlin
quote:
Originally posted by evo8
For a 2 hour set the recipe is simple - just fucking horse it out. I understand that these guys like to build long sets but why take the gig then in the first place? If youre gonna do the gig then tailor your style to the set-time, he must get sent a tonne of tunes every week, it shouldnt be a problem
Sure, but even if he'd just bang it out, you just can't kill it every time if you play three gigs a weekend.
And honestly I think getting sent tonnes of stuff is part of the problem, him and many others are mostly relying on promos now, which leads to them playing forgettable tooltracks they just downloaded at the airport last night.
quote:
Originally posted by enydo
It's like, why do I even bother going out at all if I don't live in BERLIN?
If you enjoy any of these sets and want to hear me live, I'll be playing a 2 hour progressive trance set at Basing House in Shoreditch, London on 11th October.
I'm also a resident at our bi-monthly party Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/
Jan-08-2016 21:08
enydo
~
Registered: Jan 2008
Location: NYC
I will never, Jack.
btw I was on discogs reading your reviews today during some downtime at work.
