Tag / music review

by hereandsphere

BOOTSY FUN AND SOME BLUES : GREEN VELVET @ BIJOU 08.09.13

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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

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^ 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.

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^ 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.

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^ 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.

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^ 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

THE BEST EVER : FRIDAY NIGHT @ PORTUGUESE FESTA – NEW BEDFORD

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^ Hathaway Street welcomes you

—- —- —-

“The best ever.”

That’s how The Local Vocal’s editor, Heather Cornell, described this year’s Friday night bash at the annual Madeiran Festival held in and by Blessed Sacrament Parish, the tall-spired, Iberican Gothic cathedral that sits on Acushnet Avenue north of downtown New Bedford.

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We were there, too; walking through the huge crowds of happy people — of all ages, skin colors, shapes, and fashion tastes — listening to the bassline humm of a strobe-lit rock band; drinking sangria and eating cacoila and pork butts at the food pavillion; tapping foot to the music of a screaming, hip-hoppy blues rock ensemble on the Madeira Avenue stage; shopping T shirts at the concessions on Hathaway Street; and — maybe best of all — walking up and down Davis Street, Whitman Street, and Madeira Avenue, past the Club Porta Delgada and St. Michael’s — vroomed by motorcycles — between rows of multi-deck houses in, on, and in front of which one met ordinary people celebrating life, tight shorts, tank tops, and the neighborhood.

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^ tambours and guitars led processional through the crowd. Love those caps !

This was what a Festival should be. A celebration of one’s self, one’s community, one’s tastes and enjoyments, in the heart of the neighborhood and not pushed off to some bland park on the outskirts. A Festival squeezed in among where people actually live — that’s how they do it in Europe, in cities where people live cheek by knee in buildings that hug each other; living among cooking aromas wafting past cigarette smoke, bumping on slang conversations, sliding over a multitude of immigrant dialects. Obviously it works here in Massachusetts too.

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^ screamy blues-based hip hop rock band. Where DID they get those caps ?

The Festival continues today and tomorrow. A schedule of events and locations can be found at the Festival website. It would be a really really unfortunate decision if you decide not to come to it and be part of it. So just come. You will be Madeiran for a day — maybe longer.

NOTE : the Festival lives outdoors. If it rains, you’ll get wet. And you won’t mind it one bit.

—- Mike Freedberg, for The Local Vocal

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by hereandsphere

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

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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.

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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

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^ 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.

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^ 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

BLUES TALK : JOHN TEJADA @ ARC NIGHT CLUB 07.12.13

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When this writer arrived at Arc, a new room for Boston house music, at about 12.15 AM, John Tejada was already hard at it. Working his own mix board, rich with shape-shifting knobs and beat-breaking buttons, Tejada put the bluest house music this writer has heard recently into talk and walk shape. Blues is a music of talk and walk — of move and monologue — and in house music there are plenty of move and monologue tracks. Tejada dropped a couple of those — glitch vocal tool ins — but his talk works sounded most prickly and seductive when he made instrumentals do the talking.

Born in Vienna, Austria, to an Austrian, orcherstra-conducting Dad and a Mexican Mom, Tejada, who will be forty years old next year, has been workling his uniquely bluesy sound for almost fifteen years — but rareky in boton. His last vist that we know of happened four yrears ago. The rarity of his performing in Boston assured a full dance floor at Arc, and full it was, and entirely committed to Tejada’s mix work. Guys danced to the front; cameras flashed on all sides; and on and on Tejada moved his music, never coasting, not taking a bathroom break (something no DJ should ever have to do in a two hour set), no acceding to a fan greeting. (Why fans feel they have the OK to interrupt DJs, this writer will never understand. People at a rock or jazz concert wouldn’t think to come up on stage like that.) With Tejada, fans evidently felt they owed him the space not to play “hey good-buddy ! hi-ya !” with. He was able thus to concentrate all attention upon forty or so mix board edit buttons of which he made constant use.

He describes his sound as techno — but of the Detroit, not the German version. Detroit, at Arc, it was ; a sound almost entirely blues based from which ticklish, twisty, wire-thin strands of upper register noise arose, seductive to the body as to one’s ear. His sound had family resemblance to that of Carl Craig : choppy but soulful, airy as well as blues. Tejada, however, dropped a sound much more walk and talk than Craig’s glide and sublime.

Playing his best-liked “Elsewhere,’ “Somewhere,’ and “Here” — the titles felt appropriate to the sonic displacements Tejada made — as well as “Wanna,” “Seven X Seven” and several others similar, Tejada played stomp and tickle, rumble and fumble; and his fans loved every move.

There was, however, less dancing than appreciating. Most of the approximately 225 fans stood to watch Tejada do his mixes and to snap photos of it. This was not a mistake. Tejada played the mix board as if it were a piano. Almost every knob and button made its mark, as Tejada jumped from track to track and shattered, repeated, stuttered, undertoned, fade-knobbed, flatted and sharped his sound. He kept his head down, his hands on the music, making it a throat, lips, and belly of burp, squeak, and irresistibly lush blues walk-offs.

Curiously, Tejada’s set ended not at Arc’s closing time but at 1.25 A.M. he was followed by Matt Mcneil, a local DJ who dropped a plush, loud, embracing sound. Mcneil has the deep house chops needed to take over from a headline master, and he did not lose Tejada’s ground. This writer will be very disappointed if Mcneil does not get invited, and soon, to open at Bijou, Boston’s most important house music venue, and, quickly thereafter, to headline.

— Deedee Freedberg / Feeling the Music

by hereandsphere

FIRE AND BOUNCE : OSCAR G @ BIJOU BOSTON 07.05.13

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Twenty years and more after he and Ralph Falcon, as the Murk Boys, started their three year run of Funky Green Dogs and Liberty City hits hits that changed the shape and direction of house music, Oscar G (for “Gaetan”) is still at it, DJ-ing two-hour sets that at their best remain among the most distinctive and inspiring. At Bijou last night he made clear that his signature — growl-y bounce beats sending up a fierce female vocal  — unlocks dancers’ inhibitions as seductively as ever. Playing his newer works, which don’t sound much different from what he did twenty yerars ago, and mixing in fiery vocals from other producers past and current, the Miami master got his sound under his fans’ defences and kept it there. The crowd was small — it was a Holiday weekend; many folks were away on Cape Cod — but everyone utterly devoted to what Oscar G justifiably calls “the dark beat.”

The set had its weak moments, in its third half hour especially, in which Gaetan wandered away from his signature sound. Here his sound descended to the generic, music as flat as a hundred similar DJ sets you can find in any big city club. Why Gaetan chose to digress is hard to figure; in any case, he soon enough reverted to the sound that he and Falcon invented and finished as strong as he began. And strong it was. He began in bounce mode less dark than 1990s Murk textures but equally joyous, indeed quite reminiscent of the kewpie-girl, late 1980s Miami beat music that immediately preceded his darked-up invention. Using a pc program with its own mixboards, Gaetan fuzzed the vocals, gave them a dream-like aura beguiling to one’s ear and seductively at odds with his deep, syncopated, occasionally merengue rhythms.

Such was his set’s first hour; its last half hour sounded even more seductive as he played his newer works, as soulful and sensuous as 1990s Murk but more vivid. From “I’m Moving On” to “Amame’ and “Hypnotized,’ Gaetan’s recent tracks feel like Murk works dark by double. Into them he has fed the glimmery sound effects of this decade’s “tech house.” The blend has  accorded Gaetan a rhythm of movement and passion emphatically dranatized, a sound so tipsy and topsy that it readily disoriented the Bijou crowd. Here he discarded the work of other producers; his own work sufficed.

He tooled the (Murk-derived) voice of Dennis Ferrer’s 2010 hit “Hey hey” onto his own “305 Bounce.” bled it into the “I believe you are ready” come on of  “Amame,” also a Gaetan club success (from 2011), then smooved into the ten-plus minutes of appropriaely titled “Hypnotiozed,’ his current Beatport Number One. “Hypnotized” features girly tease, a guy monologue, and enough glimmer to drown a dancer in starry atmosphere. At Bijou the dancers breathed it all in, as greedy of Gaetan’s laughing gas as its puffs felt lavish.

Local DJ Wil Trahan opened for Gaetan by playing in Gaetan mode with none of the digressions that briefly marred the headliner’s two hours. Trahan’s set inc luded several tracks as Gaetan-like as any crerated by the creator himslef. An opening DJ can proram his stuff no better than that.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feeling the Music

by hereandsphere

CRYSTAL CLARITY : ADAM BEYER @ BIJOU 06.21.13

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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”

by hereandsphere

SIMPLE TO COMPLEX, LIKE LIFE ITSELF : CHUS + CEBALLOS @ BIJOU BOSTON 06.14.13

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At Bijou on Friday night the Madrid-based DJ team of Chus and Ceballos dropped a masterly, three and a half hour set on a dance floor as crowded as always happens when this duo comes to town. They did not disappoint. Their set moved straight ahead, a long train ride as metaphor for the long ride that is life itself. We grow up from the simplicities of childhood to the ever more quizzical disputations and demands that pressure us as we come of age. At Bijou, Chus and Ceballos worked just that sort of narrative and message.

The music advanced from basic blues, bottom rhythms to overlay blends, then to overlays with streaks added and conversations; then to rhythms themselves more streaky and complicated, alongside top-octave sound effects intensely varied. The duo’s mixes, too, progressed from simple to not at all simple. DJ Chus, as inspired a shape-maker as any, bent and twisted the music, stuttered it, fade-knobbed it, and bounced it from one mode to another with intensifying aggressiveness.

His mixes touched skin and bit deep. From one-two-three on the fingers, the rhythm and scream of Chus’s work inexorably pulled the dancers beyond control into its vortices of ambition, doubt, wants, needs, dreams, and siren calls variously lovely or fatal. It was a sweet sound at first, then sparkly, cool as a crush.

As always, they worked two mix boards and two PCs; and, as always, it was Ceballos who cued up tempos and tracks — and mixed the basics — and Chus who crafted the complication. Ceballos mixed his stuff using headphones, Chus shape-shifted almost always without them.

Because Chus and Ceballos have been doing their work for a long time;  because as house music has grown up, so they too have grown, with and by way of the music. And thus their life narrative was theirs as well as one for the Bijou fans. To make the point quite clear, they tooled into their set a great many tracks from their personal journey, including Todd Terry’s “Can You Feel It,” 1972’s disco classic “Soul Makossa,” and a drastic re-work of The Fog’s 1994 “Fired Up.” Also in their flashback mix were the venerable house track “Preacher,” samplings of Danny Tenaglia’s “Elements,” the monologue from Victor Calderone’s “Let Me Set You Free,” Queen’s scream from 1980’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and — a staple of Chus and Ceballos sets — portions of two Celeda sides, “Music Is the Answer” and “The Underground.”

In addition, they slid all sorts of throwback voices into their mix, plus some segments of 1978-ish reggae toasting. And of course their basic choogle recalls that of Creedence Clearwater doing the Bayou slop. Their past is, as one expects, 40 years, at least, extensive and wide-ranging. They used all of it at Bijou.

None of these memory sweeps dominated their rhythmic progress. Their own more recent tracks, including the dreamy “Partenza” and the samba-fierce “Quimera.” (co-produced with Marcello Castelli), assured as much.

Rhythm dominated, persuaded, tossed the dancers . Choogle became  rumble, strut, sizzle and stutter. Upper register screams jazzed the beat; screeches lit it up. And then — in the final forty minutes or so, Chus and Pablo blew samba beats past talk which lifted the samba onto a babble of many percussions running across each other’s path.

This sounds like a heap of blues, and for Pablo and Chus, the blues it was. But it also sounds like an exciting adventure; Chus and Pablo’s long set was an exciting sonic adventure for sure. One that the Bijou crowd could not get enough of or adequately respond to except by yelling and dancing and raising their hands in stunned astonishing.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feeling the Music”

RATING : sublime

by hereandsphere

GIRL TALK : DAVE AUDE’ at CLUB CAFE 06.07.13

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GIRL TALK DANCE : DAVE AUDE’ @ CLUB CAFE 06.07.13

Master re-mixer Dave Aude’ made a rare Boston DJ appearance last night at Club Cafe. The more than two-hour set by Aude’ was a highlight of Boston’s Pride Week. On the same night that Roger Sanchez, equally masterful as Aude’ and for just as many years, was dropping a two-hour set at a club not three blocks away, Aude’ rocked a dance floor full and excited.

There’s no mistaking what Aude’ does. He remixes pop bop dance tracks almost always featuring girly girl singers. In the studio, no one does it better, not many as well. His sound is creamy smooth most of the time but occasionally slap-nasty. Beats race along, synthesizers chirp and whoop, and the girl singer puckers her message of love-me, of go-away, of have fun and dance with me.

And so it was at Club Cafe. Aude’ played spiffy girl dances and nasty ones, hits new and old (Cazzette and Afrojack, but also early 1990s stuff such as Inner City’s “Good Life” and parts of tracks that echoed Snap, Ya Kid K, and Haddaway), and a long chain of racy giddy girls’ nights out — all of it segued with a smooth hand. He sound nudges the entire body. There’s roll and rumble, step and tiptoe for the legs and feet; shimmy shake sound effects for the hips and chest; and voices cute, chirpy, teasing, grungy — these and more; Aude’ has remixed an almost who’s who of star and wanna-be star girl pop voices — for the head and neck. In Aude’s sound each gets center stage only to give way — effortlessly in a dissolve mix, teetering on a quick cut — to its sonic companions.

Using the scantiest of equipment, two CD players and Club cafe’s stripped-down mix-board, Aude’ still managed to juggle his three-part sound without one flat moment, missed cue, or off-base segue. There were jet streak effects, twisty riffs, moody breaks, melodic serenades; sometimes he shaped his sound as a sharp slash, a kind of sword dance. But mostly he delivered his signature : girl going giddy, soprano soaring, heart a flutter. It was a night of girl talk and girlie action delivered mostly to boys for whom girl things are a necessary freedom to love and be loved in.

There is nothing simple about girl feelings. That’s why dancers — boy or girl — who embrace girl moves adore them. Aude’ focuses his sound and subject matter as narrowly as any DJ this writer has seen; yet at Club Cafe he made it serve an almost horizon-less expanse of tones, moves, talk, and beats. The many young DJs who play girl-voiced pop bop to party people often settle for sameness and surface. Not Aude’. His mixes at Club Cafe went inside a melody and turned it around and out, this way and that, changing on the fly and doubling back. Challenging, Aude’s rhythm action sure is, to a girl playing vixen, vamp, or Betty Boop. At Club Cafe Aude made sure that all of his chosen singers commanded her chosen role — and his chosen music.

— Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music