:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 ::

Gig Review: STFU&Rave NYE, Black Swan, Bristol, 31.12.06

It's been a long time since I spent New Years Eve at a club, and to be honest there wasn't anything especially festive about this event. It was just a normal night at the Black Swan. That doesn't mean, by the way, that it was in anyway was bad.

Although the organisation could have been better (lack of mixers etc) and I think the turn out suffered due to the weather, all of the music was top notch. Michael J Rocks vs Dolphin & Teknoist was a brilliant hard-hitting gabba head to head (to head). With three producers and three laptops there was a lot of kicking around being unsure what to do whilst not performing so plenty of arming waving and air pumping ensued.



Parasite played a brilliant, and funny, hard and fast set in what was supposed to be the chill out room. He tried to countdown to midnight but was hampered by the lack of a mic. The dodgy techno version of Auld Lang Syne was hilarious. The set flagged a little towards the end so I wandered downstairs to catch a little of Vex'd. This sounded very solid but was a little too distorted to allow a full appreciation of what should have been chest restricting bass. Back upstairs (Sofi) Misoh was spinning dub-step and doing a good job of it. Despite having known Sofi for quite a while it was the first time I've been her DJ and what I heard was good.



A late arriving Aaron Spectre was setting up downstairs and when he finally let lose he provided the performance of the night. Fast, hard, pummeling metal-inspired beats just kept coming and coming, and without ever seeming to get tired. Fantastic stuff.



Rotator followed, the man behind the legendary Peace Off label and one of the originators of breakcore, it was great to finally see him live. He kept the pace up after Spectre but I have to say after a while I found it a little wearing, an hour was slightly too long. Unfortunately the planned head to head with his old friend and co-conspirator Krumble was not to happen due to a flight booking cock-up. Maybe that would have provided the variety I felt the set could have done with? Interestingly, from a techy musicians point of view, Frank used a fairly large controller keyboard and a lot of key mapping to play the entire set without touching the laptop. It was skillfully done and made for a more interesting performance.



I'd missed Demon Cabbage's live set earlier in the evening but got a quick demonstration of his PSP based tracker set on headphones back stage and it sounded great. I love the sounds you can get out of some of these little gaming devices. I think that also made him the only artist on the night not using Ableton Live to play out with too.

Pisstank was next up in the main room and uped the comedy gabba quota considerably. It was amusing stuff but I was beginning to flag by that point. A final check upstairs showed Pinch playing some well rounded dub-step and had a small tight nit crowd moving. This was, however, interrupted by a power failure and I took that as my cue to leave. I was upset I didn't get to see Etherhead, who I was particularly interested to catch, but I did have a quick chat with him. I was struggling too much with tiredness by that time and I still had to drive home. I think staying sober and avoiding drugs made me a bit of an outsider there anyway. It was also a shame to miss MDMA, who is/are always hilarious, although he (it was only Stu that night) was only going to be DJing rather than playing live anyway.

Outside I found Luke of Michael J Rocks carrying a CRT monitor and two rucksacks and hopping to hail a cab. I gave him a lift home to save the effort and it was good to meet up with him and have a chat finally, having seen MJR playing several times. Then it was off to bed with me, after briefly disturbing the long suffering Mrs.

Happy New Year to you all!

Photo set here.

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