Tag / RISE Club

by hereandsphere

STRONG TECHNO, SLY HOUSE MUSIC : STEFANO NOFERINI @ RISE CLUB 01.19.14

Image

Performing in Boston for the first time since Spring 2012, Florence, Italy’s Stefano Noferini dropped a two hour set on a dance floor less than full but more than devoted to his sound. Using a pc program running two channels only, swiping the mixboard’s knobs up and down constantly, Noferini pumped out two separate one-hour sets : the first, clanking dark techno almost 1980s industrial in texture; the second, a brighter tone plus a peppy step done in a major key. Noferini’s first hour sounded like giant robots growling amidst various kinds of jawbone booming — fantastical and seductive; his second sounded lithe and joyous, unexpected by the dancers but convincing enough to those who gave it a chance.

But back, for the moment, to the gargantuan. No techno master sports a construct as roomy as Noferini. Big and heavy, his signature sound surrounds, from underneath and all sides. His first hour featured Noferini at his rumbly biggest : “Giocotto” and “Oula” and portions of “That Sound,” his collaboration with the UK’s Mark Knight, as well as tracks by the techno DJs who he likes (and these are many; few track makers with a sound as headstrong as Noferini collaborate with as diverse musicians). He pushed and pulled textures and sound spreads, now squeezing the music narrowly, now ballooning it out, always of knife-edge shapes with cavernous interiors. Psychedelic it was. Smooth the flow, rough the content. Part of Noferini’s first hour spilled only the basics of clank and reverb; at other times tiny chips of percussion sparkled in the mix, echo-effected like sequins glinting in a dance floor light show; and all of it segued segment to segment as if changes of shape were the natural order of things.

Many DJs change key and texture as Noferini did, in mid set. For most, it’s a risky move ; why deviate from what’s already working ? So it was with Noferini. Not everybody at RISE followed his turn from boomy choogle to high steps — from drama to drone, if you will. But with a screamy break, a kind of fireworks effect, he made the leap to a sound brighter and nimbler than what fans are used to. This was the Noferini of “You Can Do It’ and his current number one download, “The End,” tracks internally complex in which sound patterns face off with one another — a kind of texture tone repartee. Voice plays scant part in Noferini’s signature sound, but there was lots of talk in his set’s second hour. “Where are all the Lakers fans ?” went one tool-in; “it’s nothing” and “who’s in my house ?” went two others. And though only about half the RISE Club dancers decided to stay in Noferini’s house, there was no stopping thus remnant. They found that this veteran of more than 30 years as a DJ can twist and shuffle, juggle and jiggle the mix all he likes without stubbing his toe — or yours. Few DJs can play against type without sounding at least partially fake; Noferini showed that he can house things up just fine — when he wants to.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

Image

by hereandsphere

TECHNO THE TOMIIE WAY : SATOSHI TOMIIE @ RISE CLUB 12.07.13

Image

^ flexible flirty techno, exotic and almost ballet deft : Tomiie at RISE Club last night

—- —- —-

If you, as a long-time fan of Satoshi Tomiie’s DJ work, came to RISE Club last night expecting to hear his dreamy, lissome, almost deliquescent house music — his signature for two decades — you found yourself puzzled. Until very late in his set Tomiie played none of his signatures. Almost 50 years old Tomiee may be — and, greying, he looks the age — but his three hour set was all about what DJs are dropping now, at the doorway to 2014. Tomiie played lots of grumbly boomy techno; and when he did lift the lid to give chants, streaks, and melodic echo a chance, even these effects felt edgy, uneasy in the headlights.

Still, this was no Chris Liebing or Lutzenkirchen factory work. Tomiie, who performs all over the world and knows his distinctions,  favored undulating rhythms, Brazilian beats, and exotic sound effects — a kind of mechanistic Africanism — and where most techno sets clash by night like poet Matthew Arnolds’s ignorant armies, Tomiie’s techno shapes fluctuated from glide to traipse, flexible and flirty. Active at the mix board, Tomiie fashioned voices to chatter, piano solos to percussion, rumble to romp. Using a Traktor running two channels only, and steering his tracks with an iPad mix board upon which textures and tones were pre-set, Tomiie cut his music constantly, lively. The impression as of extremely complex sounds competing for attention or dominance, but nothing dangerous : more like a clique of people conversing excitedly trying to be heard over the multiple babble. A stylish babble it was. Tomiie’s breaks didn’t slam, they evolved. his cuts chattered and ceded. the music sounded seamless even when most complex, in ballet terms a pas de douze, if one can picture twelve dancers tiptoeing in synchronized individuality.

Still, I waited to hear what “Virus,” “Love in Traffic,” “Scandal In New York,” “Backside Wave,” “Storyreel” and “Aruba” would play like in live Tomiie performance; and I was disappointed not to hear much of these until finally, at 5.25 AM, his set almost over, Tomiie dropped what sounded a lot like “Love In Traffic.’ And a seductive drop it was, the sighing voice commandingly seductive, the moaning music capturing your moment. It made me easily imagine Tomiie, rather than Giorgio Moroder, producing Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby” with all its body and physique translated to the lithe, finger-silky way that Tomiie makes the music love him — and you — all over yourself.

—- Deedee Freedberg / Feelin’ the Music

Image

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

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