After Action Report: Red Bull Music Academy 3D Soundclash 18/02/10

Although this night was listed as happening at the Albert Hall, it actually happened in the loading bay/basement, which really makes a lot more sense considering the scale and format of the event. It would be cool to fill the main hall with weird electronic beeps and basslines, but perhaps this will have to wait until the distant future when robots rule the Earth. Or something.

Anyway, I'm all for raving in semi-industrial settings, and I prefer my music served at minus temperatures, so for me, the loading bay of the Royal Albert Hall was the perfect gig venue.

Soundclash was certainly an accurate description of the mix of acts performing; King Cannibal kicked things off with his standard furious D&B/dubstep mix, which was followed by Mira Calix's more chilled out bleeps. While both styles might not seem to compliment each other, they actually worked very well together. Following on from Mira Calix was DJ Food's Strictly Kev, who I fucking love and never fails entertain.

Next up was Chris Clark, and bloody hell, he just keeps getting better and better. There seemed to be some hardcore Clark fans up front, or perhaps they were just drunk, and unfortunately his set was over all too quickly.

The Bug (feat. Flow Dan and Daddy Freddy) were the only artists on the bill that we hadn't seen before, so we didn't really know what to expect. Their proper noisy dancehall/dub stuff was actually fantastic, although I must be getting old, because my ears were fucking bleeding afterwards.

Finishing off the night was Plaid, who I've found in the past to be a little hit and miss. Seems to depend on whether you're there for a rave or a music performance, but their closing set completely smashed it.

All in all, a fantastic evening. Kick arse visuals and fantastic music. It's gonna be hard to go back to listening to regular two dimensional music after hearing this 3D stuff. At times we were literally being bombarded from all sides by different sections of music, and I'm sure at one point it was circling the room. Crazy.

But nice.

After Action Report: Warp20 London

So...

Warp20. Has it really been 20 years? That makes it almost the same age as me. Whilst it seemed like all the UK Warp love got dropped up in Sheffield (the label's hometown) what with the likes of Clark, Squarepusher, Harmonic 313, Hudson Mohawke (Hell's Bells I wanna see that guy live) and Andrew Weatherall bringing the noise, the London lineup wasn't half bad.

Highlight of the night had to be Flying Lotus, who more or less shredded the place, but the Plaid classics set was a treat too. I really enjoyed Nice Nice, having not really heard anything by them before. Definitely another band deserving of further investigation. Battles were probably good, I dunno. There's been a lot of hype round these guys, but I can't remember a thing about their set. It's quite likely we missed it completely anyway...

Up in Room 2, Nightmares on Wax and Strictly Kev were both fantastic. I could quite happily have stayed there all night if it hadn't been for the lure of Room 1. Kev is seriously awesome and has never failed to impress. If you've never seen him doing the DJ thing, then you really oughta do something about it. Nightmares on Wax will always hold a special place in my brain, having had his stuff on almost non-stop rotation during my first year at university, and it was pretty brilliant to finally see him live.

Also packaged with the ticket cost was a Warp20 compilation CD thing, which I've still not had a chance to check out. Whilst it's a nice touch, I kinda feel they just threw it in there as an excuse to bump up the ticket prices for the night, which is a little cheeky, but it's still a nice souvenir!

After Action Report: Wang! 10th Birthday

My friends are probably sick of my constant whinging about missing out on the birth of rave back in the late 80s. The era before the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 seems to have taken on a near-legendary status in many people’s minds, myself included. Survivors from that period whine that the parties these days just ain't what they used to be.


Wang 10th birthday down in Ewer Street Car Park; basically a load of archways somewhere in South London. There were puddles everywhere, the toilets were shit and it was freezing cold. It was a perfect raving environment. From the industrial strength piles of speakers and the 90s-esque TV wall rig to the empty cans of Lech littering to the floor, the setup just couldn’t have been better. The only real problem was the extreme shortage of set lists, which meant that we had no clue as to who was on where and when. Wasn’t really that much of a problem, because we managed to catch Plaid and Squarepusher, but would have been nice to put some names to other faces/sets.

On the subject of Squarepusher; shit the bed that guy can play the bass! His performance at Wang last NYE was incredible, and he was one of the highlights of Bestival this year, but fucking hell! We spent almost his entire set up the front, gawping in slack-jawed wonder. Absolutely mind blowing.

It seems to me that the reason that the Wang crew are able to put on such consistently good nights is because they are all about having a good time, rather than making fat stacks of cash. At least that’s certainly the impression their nights give. I get the feeling that perhaps I’m going to the wrong kind of parties when I wake up the next day feeling ripped off. Whilst we’ll never get back to the proper raving of the early 90s, at least there are parties like Wang to give us all a taste of what once was. More please!