skkatter’s CBS Weekender Review thing

Thursday

It was a rainy Thursday afternoon when I set off from my flat in Fairview Strand to Dublin airport, but my spirits were high as I was heading to Holland, Rotterdam to be exact, for the Cybernetic Broadcasting System Microparty Weekender. For those of you who’ve been living under a disco-free rock for the past century, CBS is the home of the famous online radio station and forum where the all the best in space flavoured electro and disco gets mixed into acid and Chicago house of the jackin’ variety. CBS affiliates and friends such as I-F, Legowelt, Bangkok Impact, Alden Tyrell, Dexter, TLR have enjoyed increasing popularity over here in Dublin due mainly to both the Electric City and Lunar Disko lads bringing them over so finally it was our turn to take the trip to the land of tulips, windmills and bandy 303s and check out how these Dutch fellers party on their home turf.

Rotterdam’s just a forty minute train ride from Schiphol airport on a train much fancier than you’d see anywhere in Ireland. But the fanciness was stepped up a notch once I arrived at the Hotel Bazar, situated on the rather hip Witte De Withstraat just a few tram stops from Rotterdam’s central station. This bizarre hotel (hahahah, see what I did there? Comic genius!) has different themed rooms, I started off in the Arabian room complete with decorated Koran framed on the wall, fancy looking rugs and curtains as well as some funky bathroom tiling action. But enough toilet talk and on to the first club!

Actually the first club wasn’t really a club, it’s more of a bar with a set of decks called The Bootleg Cafe which is located near enough to the Clone Record shop. It was about 11pm by the time we got there and were greeted by a friendly crowd of like minded internet nerds: “Hey, so what’s your name on CBS?” was how a lot of people introduced themselves to me and I think I disappointed them all ’cause I’ve only clocked up about twenty odd posts on it so far. I got chatting to a few ludicrously tall Dutch people but there were a lot of other countries represented too! The music in keeping with the weekender tended towards the italo-disco end of things, everybody else seemed happy with it and were pointing out some classic tracks being played, I’m rubbish at train spotting italo as I don’t really buy that much of it, but I liked what was being played and the cheap beer didn’t hurt either! The Bootleg Cafe was almost half full when I left at around 3am, it seemed to be picking up but I thought taking it easy the first night would probably be a wise move.

Friday

The next day me and my Japanese Seizure Robot Companion Maya had planned on walking around town checking out the sites but instead I found the Clone Record shop and decided to send Maya off clothes shopping while I listened to records for about three hours. I’ve already got first hand evidence of their amazing record label in the form of plenty of Clone Records releases in my collection and I was happy to note that their shop is also of the same high standard. I picked up a load of electro bits and bobs, a healthy bit of ghetto tech and a few techno things, I’ll post up a complete list of what I bought soon but I ended up going a bit mental and spent 250 Eurotrons on records. I also met a few other lads from the Bootleg Cafe last night that had the same idea as me, I commented to the guy at the counter that this would probably be his best weekend in quite a while and he said yeah, his only complaint was that nobody was putting the records they didn’t want back into the right section and he’d have to re-sort it all out later. (Of course I put all mine back in the right section due to my obsessive compulsion to keep everything in its correct place).

After dropping the records home and a bit of eatin’ and walkin’ it was off to The Gay Palace for the first of the “proper big CBS” parties of the weekend. What a name for a club, and what a club! CBS had taken over the first two floors where you had your choice of about four different bars to buy drinks from. The decor inside was less camp and more……..classy I suppose, than I expected. As for the music, Tako, Loud-E and I-F had the crowd pretty much cheering constantly, but for me it was DJ Beppe Loda who ruled the upstairs that night. I was cursing my sparse knowledge of italo-disco as he played one or two stand out tunes that I’d love to get my hands on. At times it was a bit too disco upstairs for me, but that was easily remedied by heading downstairs where things had a weirder and sometimes tougher air, Luke Eargoggle played the best live set of the weekend in my opinion. Sharp and punchy Dutch electro with a nod towards Drexciya and a wink towards Aux 88. The only bad part was that most of the crowd were upstairs for his set. Another great set I caught downstairs was Rude 66’s trip through a psychedelic dubbed out wonderland, he was playing some really weird and off the wall spacey soundtrack type stuff, it was bizarre but really worked downstairs. I planned on alternating between floors all night but I ended up staying on the dance floor upstairs for most of I-F’s set, I was surrounded by hot Dutch girls, I couldn’t leave! The club finished up at about 6am so teaming up with a Belgian dude called Julian (I think?) and Maya we set off to find somewhere serving beer or selling cans, fortunately for our drunken little heads (and expiring livers) we were unsuccessful!

Saturday

On Friday we’d been pretty lucky as The Gay Palace was only a stones throw from our hotel, but Saturday’s journey to the Worm venue/arts centre place was a different story. It took us a good three quarters of an hour of hardcore wandering after getting off the tram before finding the place, just as I walked into the Robots for Robots room (where there was a line-up of 20 or so members of the CBS forum playing 30 minute sets each) some guy mixed in The Beat Club’s “Security”, so I knew it was going to be an interesting night. I bopped into the main room in time to catch most of Seutek’s set, which ranged from Dexter-ey electro to a disco version of Cream’s “White Room” (I’ll let that one go because the rest of his set was deadly!), in a strange coincidence it turns out his girlfriend was the girl that checked me into my hotel on Thursday! Small world eh? Other stars of the night were Legowelt, who’s one of the most consistent room rockers I’ve had the good fortune to witness, David Vunk and most of the CBS heads who played in the Robots for Robots room. My favourite set of the night, and I’m not just saying this, but yeah it was Simon Conway’s, perhaps it’s because he’s from the land where DJs regularly have to pack everything into an hour due to our rubbish nightclub opening times but he built up a crowd and ended up packing out the room even though his set clashed with Legowelt’s. Other honourable mentions go to Bethany (I’ve mentioned her on the site before, she has some great mixes up on her site and SubK who I’d never heard of before but she dropped Miami Eyes by the Secret Frequency Crew and Stereotype by Electric Soul so she wins extra brownie points for that. Lots of mixed up on her site too so go download them if you like-a-da-electro beats ja! Once again the Irish contingent succeeded to out drink every other country put together (let’s push that average up lads!) with hilarious results as Barry “Nothin’ at all shure!” Donovan was reputedly “rolled home” by Jay “Lego Hair” Galligan. I managed to hail a taxi pretty quick and my head hit the hay just as 7am was struck by the digital man’s hands, he lives in my watch.

Sunday

Arrrrrrrgh, holy hangover Batman! Luckily a large breakfast of pancakes soon sorted that out and it was off around the town for more sight seeing where I got some quality photos of some boats (Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe!), crazy sideways built houses (check the photos section!) and a cool Manga robot dude! Sunday night was the final night of the CBS Micro Weekender events but unlike the others this was on in The Hague, about 25 minutes away by train. Unfortunately I left it really late to get there, and also got thoroughly lost, walking around the cold and windy beach at 12:40am isn’t the worst night I’ve ever had but it definitely wasn’t the best. When I finally found the Zahara Cocktail Bar (a cosy little place that served some unusually large cocktails) they were just about to close up! So I ordered six bottles of beer, had a bit of a chat with the almost horizontal Irish lads that were there and also a few of the more sober American, French and Dutch lads before sharing a taxi back to The Hague Central Station where the hilariously drunk Barry Donovan once again provided ample entertainment to keep us all happy until the train arrived. But by far the funniest moment of the night came when we tried to exit the Rotterdam train station, only to find a large gate baring our way. It had a door section that after a good bit of pushing and pulling failed to open, so everybody started climbing over (it was just about possible with a leg up). About seven or eight of our party made it over when somebody else realised that the gate actually slid open and wasn’t locked at all. Classic stuff!

So overall a worthwhile trip to the land of electro clogs. Rotterdam is a really stylish and cosmopolitan city. Due to its “Largest Port In Europe!” claim I thought it’d be a lot more industrial or something, but parts of it reminded me of Berlin, lots of cool kooky shops, art on the walls, skate parks, people smoking those funny smelling cigarettes everywhere. It’s not full of tacky touristy crap like Amsterdam which is a bonus! One major fault I found with it though is the terrible, bordering on atrocious service I got in approximately half of the restaurants I went into over there. It’s not that the people were really grumpy or pissed off, it’s just that a lot of crazy and ludicrous things happened including getting short changed by a tenner in once place, a fiver in another, extra stuff mysteriously appearing on the bill, half the stuff on the menu not actually on the menu (!!), but the worst one was where I had an order taken, I waited about half an hour with no sign of the food so asked where it was only to be told that the main kitchen was closed so they weren’t doing any of the main meals and would I like to order a sandwich instead? When were they planning on telling me this eh? I had no problems with the service at any of the nightclubs or bars though, just the restaurants. I wouldn’t mind if I’d been with a bleary group of rowdy drunken Irish but it was me on my own or else me and my quiet and polite Japanese sidekick Maya. I’d go back again though, for the music scene alone!

But that’s not all you lucky people, I took a large amount of photos

And videos:

DJ at The Gay Palace

DJ Beppe Loda at The Gay Palace

Disco at The Gay Palace

DJ Beppe Loda works the crowd some more

Luke Eargoggle brings the electro

Dutch Electro Girls dancing!

I-F at The Gay Palace

Seutek DJing at The Worm

David Vunk (I think) at The Worm club

Legowelt live at the Worm

Bethany plays in the Robots for Robots rooom!

Simon Conway does us proud!

SubK plays a skkatter approved set