You can’t criticize city folk for wanting to tone it down after a long Easter weekend of drinking copious amounts of booze and eating your body mass in chocolate. Not Vancouver city folk, however. Easter Monday saw some of Canada and half of Australia flock to the Commodore Ballroom on Granville Street for a sold out show for Modular darlings, The Presets. As the stage went dark and the crowd went wild, Kim Moyes came out from the haze to take place behind his wall of drums followed by Julian Hamilton in a fuchsia pink hoodie. At that moment, everyone knew that tonight was going to be one insane party.
WMC 2009 is now in the history books. Miami once again filled with party people and DJs from all of the world, and all they had on their minds was clubbing fro dusk til dawn. Big Shot photographer Kathy Vitkus ventured down to South Beach and captured all of the fun for a revealing article that’ll appear in Issue 27. In the meantime, check out some of Kathy’s amazing photos after the jump.
The New York techno scene is not as impressive as it should be for the city’s size, but occasionally there are surprises. One came on Friday night, when John Tejada played at Williamsburg’s Public Assembly for the monthly Bunker party. Fresh from his new Fabric 44 mix, Tejada kept a packed dance floor in Brooklyn moving until the early hours of the morning.
It wasn’t his first time to play at the party in Williamsburg, but the crowd that never stopped filtering in (and forking over a hefty $20 for entrance) would have you believing it was a monumental occasion. Tejada didn’t get behind the decks until around 2:00am, and he didn’t waste any time getting comfortable. In fact, the DJ didn’t budge from his one-foot-forward and head-bopping stance for the entire set.
Tejada could have packed a club in Manhattan just as easily. But the Brooklyn crowd made up for it. Respect for the techno veteran was on display throughout the wall-to-wall crowd, with the occasional “TE-JA-DA” chant and non-stop dancing in all corners of the room.
The last time I saw John Tejada he was spinning only vinyl in Tokyo’s incredible Club Yellow. On Friday, his rudimentary set up—a laptop and large mixing board between two speaker towers—matched the industrial, no-frills atmosphere at Public Assembly. The space is far from the opulent clubs with monster sound systems where he usually plays around the world, and Tejada could have packed a club in Manhattan just as easily. But the Brooklyn crowd made up for it. Respect for the techno veteran was on display throughout the wall-to-wall crowd, with the occasional “TE-JA-DA” chant and non-stop dancing in all corners of the room.
John Tejada’s techno is known for its melodic sensibility, but the show on Friday was full of body-moving, bass-pounding dance music. Highlights from his set included some tracks from the Fabric mix, including bangers “Wax1001” from the Wax label and “Cristal” by Nekes. If Tejada comes to Brooklyn again, he knows where to find a good crowd.
Back in the day ambient sets were typically relegated to small rooms at huge events. These places were the hideaways where those looking to escape the booming, repetitive beats from the main room could chill out and catch their breath. So when M83’s Anthony Gonzalez, whose live band is presently opening for The Killers, announced a solo show at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza, it seemed a little odd that the talented Parisian technocrat included a rare ambient solo set on the bill. While the venue is hardly Madison Square Garden, the medium-size venue is still a far cry from the laid-back, informal places where most sets of this ilk are performed and that certainly contributed to the awkwardness in the execution.
Gonzalez took the stage by himself, and he was met with a thunderous ovation by the sold-out crowd (one fan excited to see his hero yelled out before the ambient set began at the top of his longs in thick Brooklynese: AN-TH-ONY! We love ya!), and Gonzalez delicately began twiddling his knobs and conjuring up layers of lovely pads and minimal synth washes. Though many of his beatless sounds were beautiful and captivating, it seemed rather freeform and more of a buildup to the full band’s performance.
After rolling through several tunes, where he tapped melodies on his keyboard, noodled with his laptop and gently plucked his white Gibson Les Paul, Gonzalez was joined by a drummer, bassist and vocalist/keyboardist (Morgan Kibby was mostly excellent during the entire show and was the musical yin to Gonzalez’s yang). Together, the band tore through the songs from the latest album, Saturdays = Yesterday, but the performance was hardly perfect. Perhaps due to Gonzalez’s wealth of influences, at times M83 sounded like Cocteau Twins—lush, dreamy and otherworldly, while other times they they sounded like Thompson Twins. While Gonzalez’s vocals were fine, perhaps the biggest faux pas was the needless overplaying by the band’s drummer, who was housed behind a wall of plexiglass.
When the band was in their dream-pop zone on the many uptempo numbers the results were good. During a particularly heated moment on “Kim & Jessie,” Gonzalez briefly put his foot on the monitor and struck a quick guitar hero pose, before he retreated to the drum riser. When the song finished, he lowered his head and gave the crowd a quick bow. In the end, it was a win-win situation: Gonzalez proved that he can strut like a rock star, but he let everyone know he isn’t willing to ditch his electronic roots just yet.
