The weekend in review: Thursday, skkatter goes to Electric City

Here's my review of Electric City last Thursday that I posted to a few forums already:

"Another night of quality music down at Electric City, it was great to
hear some bona fide electro for a change, so many clubs advertise
electro as part of their music policy in Dublin but you don't actually
hear that much played out normally (and I'm going to keep giving out
about that until the situation changes!)

I missed the first half hour of Jay and Oisin but the stuff I heard
was very good, Decal - Freakin' Empires, Boris Divider - Take This
Beat, the Blim remix of Anthony Rother's Red Light District (the
original's better though!) along with some Bass Junkie, Spinks and
Kalbata and other such wobbly bass thingies.

I went into uber train spotting mode when Niall started playing as I
owned quite a few of the first half of his set and then started asking
him what loads of the techno records were 'cause I liked them, anyway
here's a rough approximation of what Niall played (it was a great set,
marred only by a slightly dodgy monitor, that really needs to be
sorted out it's always giving trouble!):

• The Advent - forget what track it was, think it's off the Light Years Away album on Electrix
• Sterac Electronics - Clown (Music Man)
• Analog Fingerprints - Meta Tool (Final Frontier)
• DJ K1 - Plastic People (Puzzlebox Records)
• Sterac Electronics - Keep On Running (Music Man)
• Drexciya - something off the Digital Tsunami EP, he was using two copies and doing some fancy chopping! (Tresor)
• Ellen Allien - something off the new album (Bpitch Control)
• David Carretta - some track, I was off at the bar
• Anthony Rother - Back Home (Datapunk)
• Cristian Vogel - something off the new Station 55 album (Novamute)
• Chancellor - two tracks off the Seed After Spring EP (I think) (Veto Music)
• Killa Productions - Women Beat Their Men (KB Records Inc)
• Oliver Ho - something off The Soft Machine EP (Meta)
• Juan Atkins - something off the Berlin Sessions (Tresor)
• Makaton - something off the Relationship To Authority EP (Rodz-Konez)
• Al Ferox - something off the Dead Zone EP (Dancefloor Killers)
• Vitalic - Poney Part 1 (Gigolo)
• some other Vitalic track off the album
• and loads of other things that I didn't recognise
• and he finished up with a Fixmer and McCarthy track

Some quality playing from the Waterford man, really fast mixing and a
tasty track selection, except for that second Vitalic track, I think
the album is pretty boring myself. Shame about the lack of people down
there, the Irish only nights are often the best music wise, probably
because good Irish DJs playing at home will take more chances with
different stuff than some foreign guests, although I'm sure Surgeon
will impress next week."

Friday, skkatter goes to Morgan Geist in RiRa

RiRa, it's a strange place really! It's a really nice venue, good sized dancefloor, a separate section to sit down and have drinks in, the DJ box is a bit high up though, I'd prefer to be able to see his records and wave at him etc. But it's strange because there are hardly every any gigs on there that interest me that much. They mostly go the funk/hip-hop/jazz type route, I wonder why they never put on any electro or techno gigs there.

Anyway the Morgan Geist gig was the first time I'd been down there in years probably, but it was worth making the trip. For those that don't know, Morgan Geist is one half of excellent house duo Metro Area and owner of the Environ record label. They'd be mostly known for their minimal take on disco house and I've really liked every Metro Area/Geist related record I've bought so I was really looking forward to this gig and I wasn't disappointed.

Geist started early enough (around 12:15pm) and throughout the night kept it slow and hmmm, groovy would be a good word to use. A mixture of proper disco, italo, I heard a Metro Area track (off the Metro Area 5 EP I think), Kraftwerk - Numbers/Computereworld.2 (tune!), I didn't recognise most of it but Simon Conway was having a field day trainspotting all the italo classics. The place was packed too, although I think RiRa is usually pretty full on Friday nights anyway. My one peeve was that the dancefloor was too full for proper robot dancing, boo! Well down to the Downtown Sounds guys for putting him on, I missed most of the support DJ unfortunately (I'm pretty sure it was Jimmy B that was playing records before him).

After the gig I went up to Morgan Geist and asked him was it true he released the Jersey Devil Social Club "Homage at 121BPM" as a tongue in cheek retaliation to Rephlex Record who managed to reissue Black Devil's "Disco Club" before Environ did and he said no, it wasn't a retaliation, but more of a tribute. And yes, he'd been trying to licence it himself and owns two copies of the original! (Yes, I have a problem, I dream about record catalogue numbers too)

Saturday: skkatter goes to see Green Velvet and Giles Armstrong at Shine in Belfast!

Strangely enough, I'd never been to popular Belfast club Shine before and I hadn't planned on going up this weekend either until the last minute offer of a place to stay (thanks Olivia!) and a place on the guestlist (thanks Giles!) so after getting out of bed at the ludicrously early time of 12pm on Saturday (I'm a "wake up at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon" kind of guy) and meeting up with young up and coming techno DJ Eddie Brennan, his official record carrier Leisha and our official Nothern Ireland tour guide and sports results fanatic Ruaidhri at the station we jumped (well, walked) onto the train to Belfast and then via a process of technology and science we ended up in Belfast just over two hours later. After a quick walk around the Botanic Gardens where I described my plan to destroy all evil grey squirrels by feeding them nuts laced rat poison, we got onto the important business of drinking beer and eventually arrived at Shine itself close to 11pm.

Now in Dublin when you arrive at a nightclub at 11pm the nightclub will be mostly empty save for the local promoter, the local DJ and the local skkatter all standing around the decks reciting catalogue numbers to each other. However I was surprised (and pleased) to see the bar room of Shine practically full of people when we walked in, a few minutes later the main room opened up and filled up very quickly too. "Impressive!" (to be said in Darth Vader voice) Giles was already playing when we walked in, I've asked him to mail me on a complete set list for all the nerds out there but I heard a lot of that weird, minimal techno stuff that I like along the lines of Frank Lorber, The Wighnomy Brothers, Misc etc. The crowd seemed to really like it and Giles himself seemed to be more animated than he usually is while DJing (I think he even smiled at one point!).

Giles played for a while (I forget how long, thanks to Stella Artois!) and then Green Velvet came on. He was joined by two other bandmates who were working some synths, samplers and drum machines while Cajmere himself was MCing/rapping/singing over it all and dancing around, giving the people up the front high-fives and generally working the crowd up really well. They played quite a few tracks off the new album including Bathroom, War On The Saints, Other Side, as well as a few old things like Percolator. It was his performance and energy on stage that I enjoyed the most, he's a very charismatic fellow and seemed to be really enjoying himself.

After he finished playing Giles Armstrong was back on to finish up the night, amongst the stuff he played was one of my favourite techno tracks ever "Oliver Hacke - Der Vampir Von Dusseldorf" on Trapez which had me jumping around like a crazy person. I then ended up at some afterparty where they had a dance off (!!) that I failed to win due to their crazy "no robotics" rule (what the HELL!?). Also everybody was laughing at me because I kept telling them I was DJing at a venue called "Eq" in Belfast in September (the 9th, more on that gig closer to the date) but it's actually called "The Eg" (pronounced "The Egg"), as it's on Eglinton Rod (I think). But somebody also bought me an ice-pop so I forgave them all.

Sunday: Back home to Dublin for Mixed Salad and Gravy

Thanks to Oliva (once again) who gave us all a list back to Dublin we managed to arrive at McGruders in time to catch the end of Corrugated Tunnel's set. A bit of a change down at Mixed Salad this Sunday, because of the rain earlier they decided to set it up inside the hallway which worked a lot better than it sounds. Chief caner Simon F was on after Corrugated Tunnel and performed his trademark breaks workout. Then it was off to Traffic (via Supermacs) for Gravy, no, not the sauce but the club Jamie, Simon F and Scottish Tom are doing. The evening got pretty blurry at this point, Long Island Teas featured heavily in the quadriplegic equation. I've got a few photos of the weekend (unfortunately my camera batteries ran out before the dance off on Saturday night), I'll be putting them up later.

Check back also for some gig news, the big one this week is obviously Surgeon at Electric City this Thursday. Anyway I'm off, talk to ya later!