Happy womping!

THE DIRTIEST BASSLINES IN BRIGHTON THIS SUMMER & IT’S FREE

I have to say I’m really looking forward to this.  With mutant bassline ravemaster rrritalin headlining alongside bruce stallion, as well as the general atmosphere of “VS.” nights at the Volks, I’m sure this will be a real banger.

Local residents Simtek, Gash and Hadean will all be playing, and I’m particularly looking forward to Hadean’s set prior to his upcoming American tour.  Simtek will doubtless be playing some of his new material just released on Off Me Nut records.

Propergander will be also stepping up with Phinga, Brown Noise and Elfivedee

Downstairs is a back to back of Balkanizeit, a world bass folkstep showcase and then the Norwich jungle specialists from Satta Sounds (who will also be playing the Volks on the following Saturday).

The sort of things I’m looking for are:

Previews and reviews of upcoming nights / DJs / Producers in the Brighton/South-East area
Interviews with fresh talent and experienced hands
Reviews and wishlists for equipment and software for DJs and Producers
Mixes with a short description and/or review
Free party tips and tricks, as well as reviews, interviews with crew and attendees etc.
As far as I can tell there isn’t a really solid resource for Brighton wompage lovers, and I think there ought to be. Please get in touch if you’d like to help me with this.

Bend before you break by Basschimp

If you like it, fan him up by following on facebook.

Basschimp – Give me a muthafuckin Break by Basschimp

If you like it please become a fan.

Fun, frolics and a melted amp; good night then!

DISCLAIMER: I DJ’d at this event, so my perceptions of it may be biased. As such I will write more from a personal perspective with less emphasis on the pros and cons as an attendee.

It was Scottish’s birthday and all through the house, young people were gathering, foam at the mouth, to share in his ageing and celebrate life, to dance and to prance and to laugh with delight. That being the case, I decided to bring my new M-Audio Xponent (MIDI controller) and laptop to provide some in-house tuneage. Scottish has had decks on the pool table before, and I thought I should take advantage of how convenient a laptop/controller set up is- a bag and slung under one arm and you have a full set up that would require 2 decks, a mixer and either cds or records. I think it’s…worth making note of the fact- I think the convenience factor will see a greater proliferation of DJing at smaller events, because the effort beforehand is a lot less.

Anyways, my friend John had told me he was playing at the Cowley Club that night, which turned out to be just around the corner, and had asked me for some new tunes, and then suggested we do a joint set. Since I’m just starting out (this would be my second club performance), I was of course, well up for, as the more exposure, practice and experience I get, the better I’ll play, more I’ll be booked and so on.

The Cowley Club is “a collectively run libertarian social centre.” It has the look of a pub but with a door that’s locked and it’s for members only in general. When events are on, donations can be asked for at the door and I assume non-members can enter then, but not otherwise.

As you can see, the hangings were top class, and that goblin head just made me want to dance!

I arrived as John was finishing setting up the rig and the organisers were putting the finishing touches on their visuals. I have to say that I was genuinely impressed- as an event organiser myself, I appreciate the depth of experience you can add to a music event with some really well worked visuals, and they definitely scored highly in that department. A wall hanging of a massive driver and a projection onto the ceiling rounded out the hangings and lighting effects. I liked the Entrobang goblin head as well- a great touch.

As you can see from the photos, it’s a relatively small venue, so the rig sounded more than ample to fill the sonic space. It then proceeded to do so during our soundchecks . The first DJs up for the night were the dubstep duo “Cult.” Now, as I’ve said before, I’m not dubstep’s greatest advocate, but the music was well (if not seamlessly) mixed, and it opened the night in good style. The dance floor’s nucleus of wompers slowly germinated into a burgeoning happy atmosphere of ravers. Unfortunately this was not to last. I’ve decided to call what happened a “red-out;” and in this context I mean the DJ(s) redlined the mixer to the point where they caused one of the amps to ignite and melt itself, and the other to overheat. At this point I volunteered to do a car run for a backup amp, generously provided by Erisian’s own Si Fucknose. We returned to a fairly busy club, smelling faintly of burnt wiring. After a couple of false starts the music was kicked off again.

Unfortunately, this meltastrophe meant that John, who was playing first of the two of us had to do a set with only the top speakers, and I was on as the system started to thump. I won’t comment on the set, except to say that it seemed to go down well and I only made one (noticeable) mistake and that was very minor. If you’re interested in hearing it, it’s here. Due to the shorter set and the delay from the meltage, I finished with DTA‘s “The Descent;” which is a piece of absolute filth! Great kudos to that man!

Lapis appreciating "The Descent." If you join the Entrobang facebook group you can see me reciprocating as I try to make an exit only to be caught in the breakdown awesomeness.

After me was the massively ace, waistcoat sporting DJ Lapis. Starting at 140-150bpm old-school/acid tekno, the tempo accelerated smoothly from tune to tune until it was slamming hardtek. The highlight of the set, if not the night, was womping my little chimpy heart out to a hardtek take on the 60s Batman TV Theme (sounds like this remember?) Now just imagine that loop with rolling hardtek drums. Fucking BATMAN! After this, given I had a birthday to be at, I made a staggered exit. In the sense that I’d get a few feet before stopping to dance- it was that kind of set. I’m told that Mindgrind’s speedcore set was a solid finish and all-in-all the music and event was (or seemed) well received by the crowd. Hopefully we’ll see many of them again for the repeat.

Personally, I had a really good night- I had a little dance, played a solid set, had a thorough womp and then got to hang out with loads of my best mates until the wee hours. On the other hand, I hope that the 2nd amp is now working and that suitable restitutions have been offered by the rub-a-dub-whoops-was-that-your-amp?-steppers. I’d strongly recommend Bass Therapy- the crowd was cheerful and in the mood to enjoy themselves, the venue, while not large, was comfortable and the visuals were a nice addition. The music was good and the price was spot on- only £2 on the door. I think the event hits a sweet spot- doesn’t go on too long, doesn’t cost too much, lets you just kick back and have some good old fashioned fun. Now if I can only find a way to raise my dosage…

Apologies again and here’s hoping I can rebuild the readership

All the best and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

3rd time was the charm, and what a filthy charm

See what I did there?  Hopefully not too corny a beginning.  However I don’t think that being corny would really be too inappropriate a tone to discuss the third installment in Wrong Music’s monstrous mega marathon of musical mashup.

Now let me start by pointing out that “mega” was an accurate description of this event- loads of DJs literally crammed into timeslots despite the many hours it ran.  No one man could ever help to see it all, and one (often intoxicated) Basschimp never really had a hope.  I can only say it how I saw it, so if I miss anyone out, it’s probably from lack of input rather than lack of opinion- sorry!

Drum guy, devil man, dubstep, 90s set, good dubstep, scotch egg, atmosphere, crazy karaoke, techno, happy exhaustion.

The first act I saw was the dark rock and live set of Devil Man- a duo including DJ Scotch Egg.  They really pulled off the contrast between the resonant chords and the up-beat drum machine.  This was not only fun to dance to, but great to watch.

Next up was an extremely impressive display of real-time drumming.Ruairi Lazers, who, despite having his own gear damaged by the trip over from his home country of Canada, settled himself in front of a replacement kit and proceeded to slam out some sick rhythms with some beatboxing over the top.

My comment about this at the time was that, had someone told me I would be able to dance to a drummer like I dance to jungle, I would have said it wasn’t possible.  I was wrong.  I spoke to him afterwards and he confirmed that his usual setup includes a sampler to sample the breaks & beatbox sounds to create an entire routine.  It’s a shame we couldn’t see it, but I felt it was an impressive start to a night that was for me all about variety and fun.  The Wrong Music raves have always striven to sample a wide spectrum of audiovisual talent, and this time I felt they really hit a jackpot.

Unfortunately for Ruairi, he was constrained to what he could produce with the equipment to hand, which, while impressive, wasn’t quite consistent enough to hold the audience.

Then the DJs kicked off with an enjoyable set of electro/dub which got the crowd moving.  Before I go any further I should point out that dubstep isn’t really my cup of tea.  I enjoy it sometimes, and I like to hear it at parties, but it’s not something I can stand an hour long set of, let alone more- I just can’t womp to it.  Doesn’t make me wanna just go “fuck yeah that’s so good” but without even saying that cos I’m too busy dancing and sort of looking like this.

Shitmat/Fruitpolos masked megamix of 90s awesomeness was a highpoint of the evening

That being said, I can appreciate it on an objective level, and I can appreciate good DJing that gets the floor moving.  This definitely ticked those boxes! Nonetheless after dancing for a while I started to lose focus, feeling that subtle “hmm” that drives me into the other room in search of new bass. What I found drop kicked my temporary malaise through a bass cone. Shitmat, in his megamix alias as DJ Fruitpolo, wearing a skull mask, singing along horrifically to some extremely well mixed 90s pop. If you haven’t heard it, his megamixes, and those of his partner in crime DJ Dickfingers, are available here. I’d definitely recommend them.

Next on the list were the headliners 16bit and Kanji Kinetic. Now spoken as someone who, while appreciating dubstep, wouldn’t attend usually attend a night with dubstep headliners, I have to admit I was impressed. Nice thematic music, very filthy basslines and quite unique in both texture and style. The crowd literally heaved. However I have to say, they were outshone by the man who came on next.

DJ Scotch Egg easily took set of the night with his mindblowing performance of balance, dexterity and 8 bit hardcore

Henry (Shitmat), had mentioned that Scotch Egg had been “saving his best stuff,” for this event, despite having a short set time.  If that’s his best then I just hope he FUCKING KEEPS MAKING IT!  Absolutely blinding both sonically and the associated performance- crowd surfing, foot pedal, three gameboys and a brutal handheld techno wompfest!  One of the best DJ performances I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.  Managing to crowd surf three times in a 20-30 minute slot without missing a beat, you can only imagine how rammed the floor was.  Really a blinder.

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Last Friday Kerry (my partner in crime) and I, travelled up to London to the Splatterblast techno event at Club Hidden in Vauxhall.  As you can see from the flyer above, the lineup was well worth the cost of travel (Brighton to London can be had from as little as £15, although due to my ineptitude we ended up paying quite a lot more).

The Sets:

The Teknoist plays excellent fast-pace break-filled techno; similar to Hellfish, he manages to fill the room with energetic beats without devolving into speedcore or losing the structure of the set.  Unfortunately, due to club issues that I’ll explain later, I missed his set (essentially they had him down as playing in one room then played him in another without announcing it!  Alas.)

Ladyscraper certainly belongs on the Wrong Music label- watching his hair flail with the brutal techno rhythm was a highlight of the evening.  I can only say the drunken (EDIT- shall we say “inebriated”) idiots detracted from what was aurally some fantastic techno.  Personally I think that high-tempo techno, particularly as part of a “breakcore” style set (by which I mean in this case, rapidly changing the style of the techno beat, introducing breaks and so on) is very challenging to produce and mix- if not done right it becomes a mess.  Ladyscraper’s mess was all in the right place- a brutal, energy filled wompfest.

I hadn’t heard Sonnotek before, but her brilliant hardcore techno set may well have been the best of the evening (at least for me).  Brutal, resonant gabber beats in perfect 4/4 time, nice effects but ultimately well structured.  One of the negatives of this night was the sense that too many techno djs have forgotten the “build up,” the “structure” of a set.  By that I mean, too many of the sets I heard just went from one techno beat to another without any sense of gathering energy.  Every time Sonnotek brought in a new bassline it was not only grimey and pleasing to my chimpy ears, it also seemed to fall at the right time, continuing to energise the dance floor.

The other DJ that was a pleasant surprise to discover was Krafty_PK.  The club was fairly empty on arrival, with most of the early ar-rave-ls making their way into the (best sounding) gabber room.  After some fairly uninteresting introductory techno, he came on and thoroughly warmed me up with a fantastically mixed combination of hardcore techno, dark and emotive samples and some well placed humour- his set was a great contrast of well-formed structure compared to the techno-babble I mentioned earlier.  I only wish the club owners had bothered to turn the volume up for this highly enjoyable hour of wompage.

Kinsheeva rocking it out at the beginning of their set

Some of the first criticism I have is this- the venue splits itself into two main rooms with a conjoining bar, which doubles as a third room.  The two main rooms played speedcore (including splitter) and gabber respectively. This left breakcore in what was, in a nutshell, the bar.  TECHDIFF, Kinsheeva and Ghost were all signed to play in a room which was half bar and half thoroughfare, with speakers you could order a drink while standing in front of.  I’ve had it louder in my car (by SPL at least).  What’s more, the theme of that room was breakcore/psykore and while I can’t say this for certain, I believe those artists, particularly Ghost and Kinsheeva, were asked to play sets appropriately. I’ve heard Kinsheeva play techno, and I’ve heard Ghost play, and both were energetic sets with breaks and effects adding spice and energy. As part of a psykore set, it felt experimental and ambient.  Still technically impressive (and Kinsheeva are visually impressive), but I thought it was a shame not to have given breakcore, as a contrasting music style, a larger stage- I’m all for an infinity of 4/4, but I became tired of the consistency of the two main rooms (I don’t particularly like speedcore for the reasons given above about what I think makes good techno).

I’ve seen Junkie Kut before also, and was looking forward to his performance, which didn’t disappoint.  As with Krafty_PK, the main criticism was the volume, but more of that in the club section.

So musically, the night was greatly enjoyable.  Thus looking back on it, I’m glad I went and I had a good time.  There were two major things (beyond the break-bar disappointment) that, at least for me, really put a damper on the event.

The Club:

Club Hidden had nice decor, but an unimpressive audiovisual system

One of the advantages of going to a club compared to a free party, is often the quality of the audiovisual systems in place.  Certainly I’ve been at free parties where the sound quality was (apparently) optimal, but nonetheless- the times I’ve been most vibrated, and certainly when I’ve been most visually wowed, have been in clubs.  The Club Hidden soundsystem barely rates the name.  It wasn’t until gone 3am that the volume, even in front of the main speakers, was impossible to hold conversation over, and never approached what I see as the optimum threshold- where it hurts if you get too close.  Now I’m not pro-deafening (this would, clearly, be tragic), but nonetheless, hardcore dance music isn’t supposed to be put out of only mid-tops because the bassbins “are just there for storage.”  Equally, I dont see the point in hiring a top UK DJ to play background music in a bar, even if it’s “the” bar.

The card for the night talked about “Live VJs,” but the visuals were sub-standard at best, while I mainly used the bar for water, I understand the drink prices were very high, and the toilet attendants were pushy and heard to sing creepily- not what you want while tripping to techno.  Hardcore + creepy singing?  Dead babies ahoy!

On the up side, the club had a pleasant outdoor smoking area which included a hot food & drink van- a nice pick me up as the night went on.

However the final point is negative- the club closed early, screwing over the organisers who had paid for the venue, earning them a definite black star (if their shoddy sound system hadn’t already done so).

The Crowd:

While I made some new friends and was impressed by some of what I (with thorough bias) like to call the Brighton spirit of some of the ravers (despite their coming from Newbury and up north)- i.e. they were friendly, accepting and easy going- the general vibe was less respectful than I like.  I’m not one for over-eager security, but there was too much pushing and shoving, stupid kids ruining a good night.  Maybe I’m just becoming cynical, but I don’t really understand why some people need to push and shove and spoil it for others- if you want to mosh, go do it with the other moshers, and leave people to enjoy the music, who enjoy the music, capiche?  To paraphrase- too many nobs can spoil even the sickest techno-broth.

Ultimately- a good night with a few detractors.  I’d have the same music, in a nicer venue, with a bit more restraint over the idiots, and more of the bass loving happy ravers.  Set of the night?  I can’t decide so I’m going to call it a split between Sonnotek and Krafty_PK.  Big it up.

The sort of things I’m looking for are:

• Previews and reviews of upcoming nights / DJs / Producers in the Brighton/South-East area
• Interviews with fresh talent and experienced hands
• Reviews and wishlists for equipment and software for DJs and Producers
• Mixes with a short description and/or review
• Free party tips and tricks, as well as reviews, interviews with crew and attendees etc.

As far as I can tell there isn’t a really solid resource for Brighton wompage lovers, and I think there ought to be.  Please get in touch if you’d like to help me with this.