Tag / DJ

by hereandsphere

FREEDOM AND CONTROL : VICTOR CALDERONE MASTERFUL @ BIJOU BOSTON 11.15.13

Image

^ full tilt train trip into the mystic : Victor Calderone at Bijou last night

—- —- —-

There were two distinct parts to Victor Calderone’s masterful set dropped on a full dance floor at Bijou last night : the absolute certainty of classic train-trip R & B, and the limitless fantastical of an escapist movie soundtrack. Calderone laid down the law of train trip sure enough to carry an entire matrix of escapist sounds. Everybody got on board — his train-trip beats sounded huge, magnetic, commanding — and once on board, found all their imaginables piqued, tickled, salivated, gravy-ed.

Rarely have I seen a DJ dominate a mix board as relentlessly as Calderone last night. Deploying one channel or two, even three at a time, he left hardly any bars of sound as-is. He whittled, blended, jumped, stuttered, progressed all of his tracks — including such feasts of abstraction as “into the Void,” “Shame Cube,’ “Break It,’ and the ultimate “The Journey Begins,” inviting the dancers to conceive all manner of spirit-physical selfies. Bottom rhythms purred gigantically; streak-ies of all sorts arose; tickle percussion — his signature — made a few appearances; and echo effects painted it all in a  glow and a shimmer that made one want to sing.

The music delivered all of it to the dancers, clothed their bodies from head to toe in space beckoning dream-scapes, with such force and conviction that every person in the room delivered body and soul to Calderone, to whatever chug, choogle, boom, and bomp, prickle and whimsy he had ready. And he had plenty.

We do not live in a vacuum but in heavy air — the gas of history afoot — and that Calderone’s mix-board work and sound progressions balanced freedom and control — opposites in the world we move in — mirrored what is going on, politically, in the arena of events. There, freedom bitterly fights against control freaks, and control robots push back against freedoms. Only if the center holds does it meld rather than fracture as anarchy. In the policy ring that center is our government; at Bijou it was the DJ. Few dancers may have noticed the analogy between government and Calderone, but by consenting to his DJ rigor and dominance, they reaped the fruits of emotional and, dare I say, spiritual liberty.

Calderone’s sound this time was quite different from the sexy-sensual, magic carpet rides of vroom and tickle, reverb and murmur that were his signature for many years. I found myself surprised — but not disappointed at all. If no longer the “Superflyin’,” “Boarding Pass”  love maker, Calderone was yet a very effective suitor. It proved impossible to resist his consensual imagination inviting a room full of digital people to a feast of danced innovation.

Image

^ opening the door : Brunno Santos

The opening two-hour set was delivered by one of Boston’s most accomplished DJs, Brunno Santos, himself an avatar of sonic abstraction riding prerequisite train tracks. His set had all the hugeness and blue funk of Calderone’s, graciously leading to the Master’s huge up-steps.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

by hereandsphere

FROM JOHN LEE HOOKER TO BRAHMS…AND GIORGIO MORODER TOO : LUCA BACCHETTI @ ARC 09.13.13

Image

Much-appreciated, but seldom Boston-seen DJ Luca Bcchetti, who lives in Barcelona, dropped a 105-minute set at arc Night Club on Friday night. The smaller than usual, but highly committed, crowd got to hear a Bacchetti sound radically different from what he presents in his own tracks. There, he projects a sound twinkly and dinky, high-pitched, with light-footed, often Brazilian beats. At Arc, however, his sound hugged the bottom octaves. The tone was bluesy, the tempo shaggy, the overlays darkly foreboding. The music was sexy and hugged one’s body. It might easily have been a John Lee Hooker performance, were Hooker alive and licking today.

Using a pc program to direct Aerc’s CD players and mixboard, Bacchetti added his own cuts and tool-ins to a set featuring — so far as I could tell — only two of his Beatport Top ten tracks, the Italo-techno “Such a Dreamer’ and his remix of Riva Starr’s “No Man’s Land,” with Carmen Consoli vocalizing gthe atnospheric girl role. The latter track seeks to seduce in the guise of angels, and at Arc it did just that, swirling synth lines and Cinsoli’s lullaby voice breasthing down upon a deep, stomp beat blened with cello-like orcherstration : Hooker meets Brahms.

The mismatched accomodations of blues and classicism continued, as Bacchetti added a cool reverb moog sound redolent of 1970s Giorgio Moroder. Here “Such a Dreamer” took center stage and directed Bacchetti’s program toward ever more intricate mismatches. Tenson aplenty, and there was more, as he broke up the comtinuity of his high-octave sound work, turning the dancers’ attention to it and then, with their ears turned away, slamming the bottom beat into their backside and butt. It is an old DJ move in house music and one that still works.

Cool tones and technical effects dominated the second part of his set. Here Bacchetti sounded more like his track craft than in the first hour, though harsh. If he used his own tracks (and I could not tell), it was in drastically shape-shifted form — sound radically repositioned. All set long he imposed the moment’s instiunmct omn his sound, veering toward the icy razz of ‘acid’ and finally out of seduction’s orbit entirely into a kind of abstract wooziness — intoxication’s after effects perhaps. All of which hallucination he pushed, like a genie, back into its bottle by ending his end in UK Glam, Underworld-ish vocal mode — rock tempo and a full-bodied harmonic as unlike his music of dance gesture as a bottle of cream is unlike a snifter of brandy. The dancers cheered him.

Local DJ Juan D opened entirely in dark bottom, bluesy, walk-rhythm mode, just the right lead in for Bacchetti’s starting point and enough unlike the sound that Bacchetti blasted later to assure that Bacchetti’s journey would be an adventure and not a repeat.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

Image

by hereandsphere

GROWL, STRUT, ROLL AND RUB : SANTE’ @ ARC NIGHT-CLUB 08.31.13

Image

Sante’ — no real name given in his bio — had played Boston but once before last night’s two-hour set dropped by him on about 150 fans at Arc Night-Club. It’s likely, however, given the lascivious power of his music at Arc, that he won’t have to wait two years for a next visit.

Sante’ is no grizzled veteran of house music — he’s made his bones only in the past six years, based in Berlin, Germany — but he plays like one. The shape of hil set harked back to that of jazz bands back when jazz was dance music played live. Like those bands — Count Basie especially, and his legion of imitators — Sante’ laid down a deep, knees to the floor bass line, extended it, mercilessly until everyone surrendered to it, then complicated it with voice tools, a familiar tune or two, breaks and repeats. Always revisiting the basic groove so that his dancers wouldn’t lose their hold, Sante’ played Noir and Haze’s stomp-and-white-boy “Around,” and — much more usefully — several of his own, girl-and-guy hits — “Bad decision,” “411,” “Make Me,” and “Do You wanna 808” featured prominently — back and forth.

Using two CD players and two mixers, with no pc program, was enough for Sante’ to make his point. He played “for the love of house, for the love of beats, for the love of dance” — quoted the lines — in full sentimental cry. You could almost feel his texture, smell his fruit, rub thigh against the music and be groped by it in return. His bottom was low-note and big-bodied. his middle register varied from percussion to tweetie noises to growly voices — and combinations thereof. His upper octaves pouted and cooed, cried, screamed. Trippy effects and spacey atmospherics put everything, the low notes included, into a kind of perfumed fuzz box. this was music to grind to. Music to run up against, to make oneself horny with. And on and on it went, no stopping, a slow (120 bpm) grumble, sweaty, sleezy.

Sante’ danced as he mixed, as well he might. The great jazz bands’ horn sections danced, too, as they swayed, shuffled, swung. All of that could be felt in Sante’s set too — though, of course, re-phrased for today’s tastes by those fat big boom machines that sneeze the music onto you. But jazz trumpets and trombones had their mutes, to be inserted, or not, or stuttered into, out of, into the horn bell. Consider Sante’s paunchy speakers his DJ mutes. Because, again like a jazz band, Sante’ took his groove and complications well beyond standard progressions into a bewilderment of improvisation, a sandstorm of talk — bits of guy voice here, peeps of girl talk there — that kept on swerving into Sante’s groove line and out again. This was particularly the case with “Do You wanna 808,” his number one Beatport download, a track in which he over-tops frequent mix mate Ramon Tapia’s “Beats Knockin'” with girlies and guys, trippy breezes, glimmer, and melodic drollery. At Arc, he played it as seduction for seduction’s sake — an undertow into which every noise Sante’ could dream up got pulled. The dancers too. They loved all of it.

Image

At its most persuasive, Sante’s sound loomed translucent. It felt blue and looked blue. There was less magic to his pause breaks or to his breaks — twisting and squeezing the sound. A break making genius he is not. Still, there was always enough groove at hand to turn a dancer’s head and bring his or her body back to some of the strongest growl, grumble, roll, and rub that this writer has ever heard a young-generation house music DJ deliver.

Peru’s Ki Ke Mayor opened very much in Sante’ style : a two-hour set of growl anf grumble. There wa less roll and not much rub in Mayor’s blues beat, but that was to be expected. The opening DJ only teases the fans. Mayor teased most effectively.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

by hereandsphere

SOUND GAMES : DJ MES @ RISE CLUB 08.23.13

photo (39)

RISE Club, of late, has booked many long-time DJs who, to our knowledge, had not dropped even one set on a Boston house music crowd. Among these was DJ MES, from Oakland, California, who, after almost two decades as a mixologist and nearly that long as a track maker, bestowed upon RISE about two hours of his more or less uniquely gamey sound.

I say “more or less uniquely” bscause there was, in his catchy, somewhat absurdist mixes and mismatches more than touch of the goofery that has made DJ Donald Glaude famous — or infamous. The difference is that Glaude’s goofing comes across consciously stupid, even cynicval, a kind of nasty Fred Flinstone of dance music. Whereas DJ MES’ sound games had wit and subtlety, surprise and, at times, progression. Though his set conveyed no deeper message, it did commit to the dependency of each sound upon its follow-ups; teamwork was thius the set’s theme, one that his quick-cuts and sound blends did not embarrass.

When I arrived at RISE, at about 3 AM, MES was already playing. He may well have played “No Jet Lag” before — it’s his signature track — before then, because it did not turn up in the two hours that I heard of him. Surely nhe would not have neglected to drop a track in which he strings “Back Back Train,” an acoustic guitar blues by Fred McDowell, onto a marching beat percussion bottom ?

That MES even knows of McDowell’s 1950-1968 era, bottleneck guitar work is impressive by itself; that he would pair it with a strut of house music shows how far he is willing to go to pair sounds unpredicted. On the other hand, that Mcdowell’s “Back Back Train’ is a dirge song, and its train a hearse, rather upends the joy in dance music; MES sure does test a fan’s tolerance. House music almost immediately, after its inception, became a dark sound in the wake of AIDS (as writer Barry Walters has pointed out); but that was long ago. It’s unlikely that fans hear “No Jet Lag” as MES’s song of joy and pain.

That said, in the two hours that I heard, “No Jet Lag” did not turn up. In fact, the sound games that MES played never wafted dark or mouthed mournful. Lots of talk he did tool in, hut standard club cant — “beats knockin.” “fuck it fuckin’ hip hop,” “go like this,” and such like. MES shifted his texture from grumble and glitch to stride and glide. He played “nu-disco,” as fans call it : the bossa nova bass line that disco overwoo’ed to death but which, in complex new contexts, is having a second club life. There were passages of Michael Jackson-ism — pop dance and melodic harmony — and a segment of sampled Diana Ross,” the “ooo ooo ooo’s” of Prelude-label, 1978 disco (Musique, anyone ?), and, constantly, he rewound some first of house music’s principles: plaintive reverbs, jazzy sentiment (“The Look of Love”), and tipsy sonic whirlpools (his own track “Hangover”).

Body pumping, head bobbing, the stocky veteran MES put sonic somersaults onto the menu of a club not quiter two-thirds full until, a few minutes after five A.M., he tooled in a vocal “you’re time’s up” and — was done for the night.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

> the house of blue lights at  A,.M.     >

photo (28)

by hereandsphere

CREATING STREAK-IES : OMID NOURIZADEH @ RISE CLUB 08.17.13

Image

It has been a commonplace, since the late 1990s at least, for house music and techno DJs to create, as a bridge between rhythm runs, jet streak effects. There were jet streak effects even in late 1970s Eurodisco and beyond; their appearance as a kind of intermission in techno, especially, simply honored dance music tradition and moved it upward. At RISE Club last night, however, Omid Nourizadeh, also known as “Omid 16 B” — Tehran born, but for a long time living in England, didn’t just employ streak effects; his set centered on them. His streakies soloed; they acted like soprano diva vocals, lifting the music, screaming it, a throat of ecstasy.

Placing the spotlight on streak effect breaks has portended in techno for quite some time. All that Norizadeh did wass to give in to the movement and make it his mark. this he achieved. Again and again his streak effects displayed complexities all his own : notes soprano and higher than soprano, metallic clinks and twinkles, breezes, wind rush, pants and gasps, twists and rope knots of scream, screech, and cheering. Usually, a DJ’s streak effect breaks stop the dancing; not so for Nourizadeh. RISE’s crowd dacned across his streak breaks.

Using only Rise’s mix board and two CD players, programming many of his own tracks — including the luscious “Slide To Unlock,” a graceful and echo-laden “Double You,” the chanted “Yeah Yeah,” and “Blue Jeans,’ his and Lana Del Ray’s much updated equivalent of the reverb, undulating rumble and girl in heat duet that Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, in “I Feel Love,” rode to dance music glory so long ago — Nourizadeh made forty years of disco, house, and techno very much his own.

That music is not something that he has learned after the fact Nourizadeh has been active in DJ-ing for 20 years. his first album, Sounds From Another Room, appeared in 1998. though less known in the Us than fellow Iranians Dubfire, Sharam, and Behrouz, he is their contemporary. And, as he made fair to prove at RISE, of a dance music imagination as dominant as theirs.

Though his reverb bass lines, Brazilian rhythms, and girly chant drop-ins all recalled the shape and frills of disco, Nourizadeh used none of that era’s instrumental cliches. This was not a set of recaptured memory but of recreation, in entirely different sonic context of disco’s feeling and character. Daft Punk, eat your heart out.

Almost all of his set felt trippy, spacey, gently psychedelic. Deep beats rolled and rumbled, then strolled coolly, then morphed to samba, as soundscapes of innumerable siren provenance glittered in the upper frequencies. Much of Nourizadceh’s high note evocations sounded like Iranian or Kurdish pop — a soulful wail, falsetto notes, a mountain top flute yodel. In which mode he reminded this writer of Dubfire’s sound; but he did not linger in Persian mode. Into his soup of seduction he dropped street talk, reggae toasts, John Ciafone’s classic “Club Therapy,” cries of “you can’t stop,” and even a chant that went “you’re crazy, Limbaugh !” No one on the RISE dance floor cared to disagree with that !

Having dropped his Limbaugh message, however, he rapidly quick-cut the music to puckering glam-rock — think Erasure and Depeche Mode — whence he jumped to heavy, boot stomp techno leading back to Brazilian beat and a concerto’s worth of streak effects long and tortuous, delightful and pained, embroidered and spangled, a luxury of tactile sounds — especially the strong swirls and twisted spurts and hushes that climaxed his live take on “Blue Jeans.” With an economy of mix moves he made his effect breaks act out the stroke and desire of his rhythms. Dance music has rarely exulted so blatantly, yet melodic, in its orgasmic core as in Nourizadeh’s long strong bursts of liquid sound.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

by hereandsphere

BOOTSY FUN AND SOME BLUES : GREEN VELVET @ BIJOU 08.09.13

Image

Green Velvet, whose given name is Curtis Jones — who also makes house music as Cajmere — dropped an almost two hour set at Bijou in Boston last night. For this writer it was first time seeing him here, and, as far as I could learn, it was his first Boston gig. Why that is, for a DJ and track maker as original as any in the genre — and for more than 20 years– is hard to say. Velvet has made more recognizable house music hits than almost anyone.The list begins with “Flash,’ as ubiquitous a DJ drop as any, and continues : “La La land,” “Preacherman,” “Shake and Pop,” “Answering Machine,”and “Harmageddon.” All of which Velvet included in his set — though, curiously, not his new one, “Bigger than Prince,” a side just as popular, and edgy,, and as his venerables.

Still, here he was, lime green hair and shades, a jazz cat gone punk, in current Boston’s top house music club, using an old-school two CD players and mix board only. No PC program, and only two channels did Velvet need to show his grin. Listened to as recorded, his tracks rest palpably in the Bootsy Collins, “Ah the name is Bootsy, Baby” zone, a joke-funk sound now 30 years old and older, and in the even more clownish, Newcleus “Jam On It” vein — a track also 30 years gone. At Bijou, Velvet’s funk talk and joke beat of thirty years ago were enjoyably on offer, but so was something much older: a growly, gravelly groove as blues-true as the bottoms Robert Nighthawk, Jack johnson, or T-Model Ford could have made, had these bluesmen worked in house music shape. Velvet’s stride and slide felt like late 1950s Nola stuff, his grumpy rattle and hum like a Jay Miller Shreveport session — all of it encased in house music progressions, of course.

Though just barely. Velvet pushed the house music envelope as far toward old funk and older blues as any house music this writer has ever heard live. Much of his set was vocal, story-telling stuff — think Bo Diddley. When he wasn’t tooling in his joke talk (“Answering Machine”), or offering advisory no-no’s (“La La land,” “Flash”), he featured giddy girls cooing over twangy guitar (as in Bo Diddley’s “Gunslinger” !) and show-off guys wise-cracking. There was a long line of goofy conversation, such as jazzmen of the bebop era used to spit out on stage : “Mozzarella…I need ketchup…beanstalk a beanstalk…thanks for fuckin’; it….my house, you won’t get in.’ And such like, all in bawdy absurdist fun. Below it all there was plenty of rumble and jump, marching music strut, shaggy shuffle, and much more for Velvet’s fans to dance on and cheer about. They did both.

House music DJ-ing is all about getting the fans to give it up, to lose control. there was no way that Velvet’s Bijou crowd could stand up long against his attack of absurdism, shaggies, growl, grumble, and stride and slide, rhythms and effects that pushed the dancers every which way from head to shoulders and knees to toes. His quick cuts gave no quarter, his drop-ins no out, his twisted noise bridges no break. From start to close Velvet dominated his sound, aimed it, hit the bullseye of both funny bone and step reflex. At night’s end the dancers were chanting and Velvet was sweet talking. A fitting summation of as strong a roots set as any that this writer has seen an acknowledged house master drop.

Tamer Malki, a Boston DJ master of deep house, set an extremely tasty and sympatico carpet for Velvet to ride. Malki even played the groove track of “Answering Machine,” an applaudable tribute and preface to the book of beats that Velvet’s set recited.

—– Deedee Freedberg / Feelin the Music

by hereandsphere

DJ MUSIC AND THE “SELFIE” SOCIETY

Image

^ selfie music

—- —- —-

We have watched house music and techno develop, as pop music genres must, over the past 27 years or so since these genres first grew a name. Of everything that house and techno first came to me, however, nothing remains except for one aspect : it’s solo stuff. Yes, there are DJ duets, a few of them superb. They are exceptions. To probably everyone who imagines a DJ, the image is of one person, earphones on, commanding equipment that sends out good vibrations, good rhythms.

It was not that way in rock and roll, nor, for the most part, in jazz. Rock and roll was played by bands — mostly three or four musicians, sometimes five or more. If a rock band featured a soloist — and many did — he or she was always, always of that band, never by him or herself. In jazz, the small combo and the big band were the rules. Solo performance arose from ensemble performance and took place within it.

As ensemble genres, rock and roll and jazz signified community, demonstrated common interests, rose above the glitter of self, its smell, its gimme’s. Yet of course the urge to spotlight rumbled within the music and often burst through it. Stars arose aplenty and took over, nailed the fans, made their names immortal — backing band or no backing band. Yet even then, even with Elvis or James Brown, as elephantine as any egos that have ever walloped an audience, the music needed several players to build its arc, give context, outline the star’s temper and contours.

With DJ music there’s none of that. the audience is the context the setting the temper. There is one music maker and one only; he or she does it all. No previous pop music, except maybe the blues, has ever presented so singly. Yet the blues is best played within four walls, or on a front porch. It is also music of pain — maybe joy and pain (in the immortal phrase of a great song by Maze) — and of one person and nobody else. Blues is as personal as a toothbrush. DJ music, on the other hand, though almost always solo, is hardly ever singular, and though much house music cries pain as often as not, the pain it cries is the fans’ pain. (It may also be the the DJ’s pain, but only as he or she is of the audience as much as at the mix-board.

The art forms closest to what DJ music does are painting and photography. Here the presentation is exclusively the artist’s — hermetically so. If it speaks to those who look, it speaks to them all, equally; or to none. Paintings and photographs do not — cannot — send a message only to one fan, or a few. For how can the photographer or painter know who will look ? The most popular DJ music does the same. It sends the DJ’s message — and his or hers only — to everyone everywhere. There is no locality in big-arena DJ music, no observable bounds, no contour or temper. It contains no private messages, no communal come-ye’s.

If the most popular DJ music has no definitions, why does anyone like it ? Yet a lot do. All over the world millions love big, beachy, smiley DJ music. Why ? There is, of course,. never a simple answer to why anyone likes a work of art, expression, entertainment. Some like them because their friends do. Some are snagged by the rhythm, the squiggles, the giddy glee. This writer is tempted, however, to conclude that people who like big-name DJ music do so because the music is its own mirror, its own photograph; a “selfie” sound track.

Image

^ selfie at work

The “selfie” — a smartphone snapshot, usually, of the person taking the snapshot, usually holding the smartphone up to her or his face — is as much the watermark of DJ society as the hot rod was of rock and roll, the two dancer twirl and leaps of jazz, the packed-tight dance floor of disco. At the disco, no one thought of being just a self; one melded into a crowd, sweat to sweat, thigh on thigh. People went to jazz dances in pairs, foursomes, whole busloads. Rock and roll was rebel music, but a soften as not, the rebel of it was an entire generation of young people. At huge DJ gigs, however, the fans exult the music by taking “selfie” of themselves — all of them the same “selfie,” but who’s counting ? The only number that matters in DJ music is ONE. Sound familiar ? it’s the politics we live in, the music we live by.

Image

^ the selfie icon ?

This is not to say that there are no DJs who play to contours and communities. What today is called the “underground” features plenty of masterful DJs who play joy and pain, message and aspiration, struggle and stride, and a vast dome of images frightful, mechanistic, bellowed and screeched. It’s solo music, but solo is not the message. Friends, competitors, alliances, imagination — these are the messages often carved by “underground’ DJs. Still, the “underground” gathers a fan base maybe one-fiftieth as big as the solos who populate big DJ gigs by the tens of thousands. Is it surprising that one encounters hardly any “selfie” snap-shooters at “underground” DJ sets ? When you are one of 20,000, it is you and only you swimming in a sea of bodies. You’re very, VERY much alone, and you know it; and the “selfie” is an icon of aloneness as lonesome as any such this writer has ever seen.

Image

^ a selfie = alone = lonely

On the other hand, when you’re on a dance floor with less than 200, every shoulder next to you and leg on the other side of you become real people who matter. There the self has allies warmer than a selfie pic.

—– Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

STOMP OF BOOT AND SMOOVE IT OVER : RAMON TAPIA AND ANTHONY ATTALLA @ BIJOU 07.26.13

Image

Two track-making DJs of very dissimilar voice, Ramon Tapia and Anthony Attalla, dropped 75 minute sets each at Boston’s Bijou NightClub on Friday night. It was Tapia’s first local performance since 2010, when he rocked the now-shuttered Therapy in Providence; many scenesters and house music connoisseurs came to see Tapia reshape his well-regarded hits — “Intense Idea,” “Y Not,” “Wonderland,” and “Freedom,” his number one download at Beatport.com. As for Attalla, he has played frequently in various Boston dance-music clubs; and though he too has a large repertoire of produced tracks, it is his live mix work, not the tracks, that people come to see.

It played out exactly thus at Bijou. Attalla played many of his tracks — rough, racy, abrasive and energetic things — in loud big, boot stomp mode. He shoved his entire body into his mixes, almost as if he were doing push-ups. He leaned into the board’s knobs, bobbed his head, clenched fists at them, like a boxer in the ring. Using no PC — nor did Tapia — Attalla spliced two CDs into Bijou’s fully-arrayed mixer, set the boom, clang, and bamm going, let it ride; pushed the pitch now and then. At first that was all that he did, but before long he cranked the soundboard hard, and from that point on dropped big, scary truck beats onto the dance floor, one upon another with voice grins tooled atop — and in and out, like dancers stepping and jumping from spotlight to dark mists.

Image

Attalla put his stomp noise into full locomotive shape and kept it there with some of dance music’s current talk drops — “there’s whores in this house” made its second appearance in as many Fridays — normalizing what was a very loud sound, an almost solid brick of it. Waving his arms in the air, punching at the music, Attalla was his own go-go dancer. But one with enough grace to feature, toward the end of his set, a Ramon Tapia track, “Intense Idea,’ which might well have been written with Attalla in mind.

Then it was Tapia’s turn. In no time at all his soft, smoove sound put melody into service, and an interplay of beat and percussion that changed Attalla’s single-minded music of rant into a music of conversation, of two people or more than two. Tapia stood supple at the mix board, fingering the knobs but not attacking them. Into the mix he ran “Wonderland” and tracks similar, and then his own version of “Intense Idea,” more complicated than Attalla’s single-minded streak. This was followed by a soulful, uprising, melodic track onto which came a vocal climax. It was the entire evening’s sublimest song.

Attalla’s set featured very few pauses or bridges made of mix twists. Tapia, however, filtered many such twist bridges into his set, and all felt just right as he sculpted them. For the first two-thirds of his 75 minutes, Tapia had Bijou’s dancers swaying and swooning.

Curiously, though, Tapia had not played “Y Not,” perhaps his most soulful track, and, as he began the last third of his set, he missed a beat cue, flubbed a segue, and lost the handle of his tuneful smoothing. Inexplicable were the next ten minutes of his performance; but, as the end point of his time grew near, he recovered himself. The sound now was purely house music, and blues that seemed to apologize to itself. Tapia ended strongly, playing his top hit “Freedom” almost as a sigh of relief that he had escaped his own misstep. The Bijou dancers cheered, and many ran to get their pictures taken embracing a sweat-browed Tapia.

Wil Trahan opened in his usually commanding manner. Like the DJs of old, Trahan chases down tracks that no one knows but which, once heard, everybody wants to have. With tracks like that in hand — best was FCL’s “It’s You” — it’s easy to dominate a statement. Trahan stated; and dominated.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

by hereandsphere

SLAM, FLIRT, AND RUMBLE : GARY BECK @ RISE CLUB 07.20.13

Image

^ Gary Beck : two hands on the wheels

Facing a dance floor so crowded that almost every dance move required shoving, techno hot-shot Gary Beck, making his first RISE appearance, dropped one of the most passionate techno sets this writer has ever attended. Using Traktor with two CDs and one mix-board, Beck imposed his excitations on almost every minute of the music. He mixed with both hands, all the time, often impelled by his body action. Many DJs dance for dancing’s sake at the mix board; Beck made mix moves of his dance moves.

He played mostly his own works; and as he has more than plenty of tracks to his credit, he nowhere near exhausted his crate. His sound is a seductive thing, flaunting ghouls’ smiles and glints of flirt talk. These pop in and out of, or ride alongside, a bottom ramble that has more flesh on its bones than one hears in almost any other techno. At RISE it played out lasciviously : the well-known hit “Diva”; the sentimental glimmer of “Vaag”; the clamor and rapture of “Before the Crash”; and — peak moment — lots of “in your face” girl talk atop the bristling bottoms of “Video Siren.” Plus many more Beck tracks put onto fans since he first came to world-wide attention about five years ago.

Heft and heave are Beck’s action. Set to classic train-ride rhythm narratives — of roll and chug, saunter and strut, his muscle tracks carried the RISE dancers’ bodies along with them. Beck made it feel pleasurable to just move, move, and move; and as he inserted barely a handful of pause breaks into his trip of continuity, the dancers had few opportunities to stop moving. Not that they wanted any.

Beck’s basic DJ move is the quick-cut, a mix  technique first devised back in the disco years, whereby the performer jumps from one track to another without warning — no overlaying, no dissolve, just a leap of faith. Beck’s quick cuts slammed one track’s lift off against the next track’s stride — using the jump mix to ramp up the power of his music. Again and again he quick-cutted beat to voice, voice to beat, and beat to bigger beat. After getting slammed by such an energy burst, the RISE dancers found Beck’s runs of rumble — themselves as heated as most DJs’ mix bursts — almost easy to ride.

Thus it was that Beck’s three hours of slam, flirt, and rumble raised his set from mere music to a peak of body, soul, and spirit; a party so non-stop that few who exercised in it will soon forget. No wonder that the crowd included many local connoisseurs of techno, DJs included. Their being on hand was no mistake.

photo (62)

^ Camilo Serna at the RISE mix-board

Almost as fascinating a performance was Camilo Serna’s set of crunch and rumble. This was Colombian Inependence Day, and many at RISE were there to celebrate with their fellow Colombian as much as to see Beck. Serna wore a studious look, the face and delicate body of a nerd. Twenty years ago, guys who look like Serna would be seen jamming in an indie-rock band. Today they are DJs like Serna, all business at the RISE mixboard, an expression of absolute concentration on his face as he dropped a tangle of ferocious soulful beats.

—- Deedee Freedeberg / Feeling the Music

by hereandsphere

CRYSTAL CLARITY : ADAM BEYER @ BIJOU 06.21.13

Image

There haven’t been many techno sets as masterful as the two hours that Sweden’s Adam Beyer sculpted in Boston on Friday night for an awed crowd at Bijou. Using the most minimal equipment — two CD players and a mixboard, no PC program — thus running only two channels, Beyer played with a clarity or tone and precision of texture unmatched in the techno DJ universe. He proved that clarity and precision are part of techno’s very message, the why and the how of its reconstruction of song and sense; the power of techno’s groove and the shine of its visions of urban noise and inner dream.

Other techno DJs, even the best — think Stefano Noferini, Dubfire, and Chris Liebing — evade the genre’s call for clarity by incorporating aspects of house music into their sound. Noferini imports the harsh beat of rave; Calderone, the sentimenatlity of soul; Liebing the abstract mechanics of German “industrial.”  Not so Beyer. He DJ’s fearlessly. The techno that he stretched into two hours of growly, grainy stomp — overtopped occasionally with pricking, sparkles — sounded as singular as possible. It was techno being techno and techno only. A sound so uncompromising could easily have bore dancers; at Bijou, however, Beyer’s craftsmanship detailed every tone shift, every texture nuance, and aligned them in progression narratives that relentlessly seduced his Bijou fans

Beyer never allowed his tracks to go untweaked. Tall as an NBA foward, slim and long-fingered, he bent his body to the music, reached onto the mixboard, dinged its knobs like a guitarist. He stuttered riffs, slammed beats home, fade-knobbed one line of tones, burst another. He gave extra attention to track pitch. As he played one CD, he was cueing the other, making every jab, boom, plunk, and purr speak with almost theatrical accuracy of diction. And if Beyer’s diction was mostly an urban din, not voices, it spoke a message as fascinating to the body as any voice on a stage.

His set beagn simply with a basic bluesy four to the floor, a force drive that scooped up dancers’ bodies. Gradually Beyer complicated his sound. Drop-ins talked back to the groove. The groove growled, as if arguing with the drop-ins. In the second hour Beyer changed beats, switched from funk to samba, tooled in some orchestral ear fluff, even at one point slid in a talker’s monologue. Yet nothing that he added to his basic sound led it astray or into vagueness. Even at set’s end, as his sound stuttered like scatted jazz, Beyer’s hand held tight to the throttle and brakes of his mixboard, concluding its stretch with a rattle of laughter.

Having local master DJ Wil Trahan open was an inspired choice. Though Trahan usually plays soft, soulful house, he loves what he calls “heavy techno.” In front of Beyer, “heavy” was what he was called upon to play, and did, with a relish evident in every scrape, buzz, and rumble of his PC program.

rating : sublime

—- Deedee Freedberg / “Feeling the Music”