LA-based underground DJ crew Droog — Andrei Osyka, Brett Griffin and Justin Sloe — are known for their quality rooftop parties at The Standard Hotel and uncompromising releases on their Culprit label. Droog was tapped to play Coachella on Saturday, and Justin Sloe was kind enough to give Big Shot readers the exclusive lowdown on how they fared at the gig.
Bruised and battered from an early morning flight home from Miami — well, it was actually from God’s Waiting Room ( a.k.a. Fort Lauderdale), I hazardously sped to my apartment to meet up with some friends to drive to the desert for day two of Coachella. A couple quick hours later we pulled up to the Indian Wells credential check where they assumed us to be vendors. With his moustache, I’m sure Brett’s been mistaken for a glow stick peddler before. With the passes in-check finally, we hurried on to the fest.
The place was packed and all geeked up from the guy on before us — who was nice enough guy to play some truly terrible music.
As we get somewhat close, I called the promoter to see if there’s a way to get us in quickly as we were about 15 minutes from when we’re supposedly to playing. He pulled up in a golf cart just as we’re parking and we fly into the venue. Somehow we manage to get into the Heineken Dome with about five minutes to spare. The place was packed and all geeked up from the guy on before us — who was nice enough guy to play some truly terrible music. I grabbed some music and quickly realized there’s no way I could mix out of the superfast screeching music he was playing. I let his last track run out and started to rebuild with what I know. This scared off some of the crowd which I’m totally fine with — if that was music was their [preferred musical] style, they would probably not like us.
After a few tracks, the crowd that was there was back into things, or there was just enough drugs to get them going — either way people were bouncing off the walls. Starkillers were on after us and ran into some delays, so we played an extra 30 minutes or so. We had an amazing time in there. It was great to see so many familiar faces, with all of the great performers at the fest they took some time out to see lil ol’ Droog. Other highlights for us at the festival included SBTRKT, Jeff Mangum and Radiohead, plus an after-party with Snoop, but no 2Pac hologram. Thank you, Coachella!