i posted my review in the wrong thread...so not to be redundant but.... i just need to reiterate the fact that this was TOTALLY worth the drive up from nyc! i brought my friend who isn't even INTO dance music in the least (let me put it this way-- we were listening to interpol all the way up..), and she loved every second of it!

i thought james did an excellent job of warming up the crowd- when i got there around 10:30 (confession: i was actually waiting in the car until exactly 10pm, which is when i thought he'd go on...yes, i was pretty neurotic about catching every minute of jz's set!), he was playing bleepy, atmospheric chilled out beats. no one was really dancing yet, because the place was just opening up and i thought the music had the perfect energy level- it wasn't boring or too dreamy, and it all had a nice techy feel to it. yum

more people were showing up towards midnight and he started laying down the acid/electro tinged tracks that i came out for! it was my first time in montreal and i was impressed with how up for it the crowd was. james built it up with really funky acid shit and slammed in a lot of funky breaks for the end of his set. something i really respect him for is the fact that he does his thing, and it's always a risk to do that, but he loves what he does and it's so apparent in the way he rocks the crowd and has so much energy in the booth. not many djs would throw down new school breaks on a main floor, but he kept it coming and the crowd loved it!

anyway... his mixing was flawless (which is pretty much a given at this point, if ya ask me..) and his style is so original... it definitely leaves me something to aspire towards every time i hear him! the way he uses the hot cues on the cdjs and the fx and of course the scratching..even his EQing and how he switches out the bass or loops a vocal... AHHHH he is so fucking amazing! when i saw him at crobar, i kept switching between dancing my ass off and just listening to what he was doing. that's such a rare thing that he can make you appreciate both...

i only IDed a few tracks... 'get kinky'-plump djs (actually, he IDed that for me afterwards bc it just blew my mind!), a remix of galvanize (where he looped and delayed the vocal sample on the drop while mixing out of it.. brilliant) and a papua new guinea remix. someone told me he dropped his new tune and it was definitely one of the most killer tracks i've ever heard! very electro-y and clean.

even though i would've killed for him to play all night, the 3 hours of him that we got were just phenomenal... it was exactly the inspiration i needed before working on my WMC mixes

catherine

PS thanks james for the nerd talk