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Review: Shake It @ The Basement, Labour Day
After labour of love, the crew decided to hit up Cam-the-maxwell-tasia's sic pad for some pre-basement beats. Cam wanted to put on his favourite New Kids On The Block mix tape, but got voted out in favour of www.di.fm's tribal radio station (pretty wicked page, lots of readio stations...download winamp to get the highest quality live stream.
Chantelle decided it was time for some papaya. That's right, papaya. It's not as bad as I thought it would be.
Charged up on papaya, we headed down to Bathurst & Queen to Basement. Lots of peeps were in the hallway going through the search and descending into the inky blackness with beats echoing up.
My goal was to hear Mark Oliver, who's set was at 7 am. My only impression of Mark Oliver was from my early Guv days when the DJ booth was way up in the corner of the guv complex, far away from any personal connection to the crowd. Now, here he was in a small intimate environment, banging out some sic tunes on two turn tables and three CDJs. I had heard Mark has some serious skills, being a mainstay veteran of the Toronto electronic music scene--so seeing him flip through records and mixing vinyl and CDJs together so deftly was something to behold.
I wasn't feeling all of the tunes he was throwing out, but could certainly appreciate the level of skill in mixing. There was a good crowd present too--the largest that Basement has had since opening. He had the crowd dancing nicely--no one wanted to leave the floor.
After Mark's set finished up (around 10am?) DJ Rudee took the decks. I've always held that Rudee's mixing is some of the best i've heard, but his track selection isn't always there for me. His set on Monday, however, was one of the sexiest and beaty mixes I've heard from this guy. I loved every minute of the set, and it totally suited the mood of the club for late morning. Thanks to the wonderful world of facebook, I found the set for download, nab it here:
Rudee - Special Guest @ The Basement (Sept.01.08).mp3
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wcve0b
We grabbed some food in anticipation for Anas Attia's set at 12:30pm.
I'm a huge fan of Anas--I enjoyed his set at Mod Club last Friday, and he totally rocked my socks on both Bound By Sound boat cruises he is responsible for. However, I have to be honest and say that the tunage Anas was throwing out that morning at Basement wasn't my thing at all and totally killed my vibe. It seriously made me want to bleed my ear drums dry, remove them and then offer them to some sort of vodoo priest as an offering to whatever audiologic god was out there punishing me. The rest of the crew weren't feeling it either and we decided to this was our cue to end our Labour of Love / Basement celebrations and head home.
There's a good crowd building for basement now in the mornings, and the liquor license is great for having a beer or shot of something good later in the morning. All in all a fantastic morning and great way to end off the holiday weekend.
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