<intro> I had hitchhiked from Berlin taking the host’s words to heart (No excuse if you aren’t in the country). Some said it’s 700km, and were surprised I did it in one day (about 9h). I thought I was rather slow, and dutch people suck when it comes to hitchhiking. Anyway, I really wanted to be at this night with such a delicious line-up. I simply can’t remember I’ve ever seen as much goodness on one night before. Usually I’m the type that allways complains about the music, and the crowd, too. This night I was switching between the two floors because I wanted to be at both and don’t miss a thing (but I’ll do my share of complaining anyway). P.S. I avoid to flash at parties, so my pictures are sometimes more mysterious traces of something one can’t quite make out than ‘real information’.</intro>

For me it started with 2/5 BZ, an artist who’s record ‘no turistik, no egzotick’ ( ‘tracks from the john peel bbc radio 1 session 06/05/03′) I own rather by accident than anything else. It had appeared somewhere on the site of some mailorder, and because the description sounded good I decided to give it a try. It’s a big record though, mutating bellydancing beats that end up chopped up at high speed. It manages to make this sound natural, like bellydance music had to evolve to breakcore at some point. And that hits the nail on the head for me. My mother has been a bellydancer some time ago, and I always missed that kind of rhythmic diversity in contemporary ‘dance’ music of all kinds. I understand that it is easier to mix if a tracks bpm number is constant, and that with most music soft- and hardware that loops you have to make an extra effort to slowly change the speed etc. but I miss the energy a skilled drummer can provoke by more or less subtle speed changes (Filastine made me happy that way, later that night).

But 2/5 BZ didn’t start out as I had expected, instead it all began with some truly ingenious mashups, hiphop, r’n'b and heavy metal all together making me want to dance my ass off. Which I would have done, if I had been able to take my eyes from the projection behind the stage. I still don’t no what to make of it, and I don’t feel like dancing at all if Ahmadinejad is looking down at me all the time. Maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t understand what the words ‘Ethnik Paranoia’ under Ahmadinejad’s face are trying to tell me. I would be afraid of anybody calling for the destruction of Israel with nuclear weapons not so far out of reach. After some time of not being able to relax I went to the other floor and had a look at Gustave. I liked what I heared, it was beautiful music, but I was too excited to really listen to this woman, so I wandered around a little, checking out the books and records that were sold in the basement (luckily I wanted to buy so many that it would’ve clearly exceeded my budget, and bought, well, just one the next day, but that is a post of it’s own).

Doddodo, which I had missed in Berlin earlier this year because of being sick. As some of the other artists that made this night so special she absolutely does the right thing, whatever that may be. She stands on the table, seems to just play around, push some buttons and rejoice in the effects. Everything from folklore to gabberish whatever-core comes out. Some of it sounds like the pervert little brother of ‘esoteric’/’spiritual’ ambient music, all ethno kitsch playing with bodyparts it’s parents said it shouldn’t. After Ove-Naxx took over I skipped out again to have a look at mnk_toktek, but I guess I came a little late, I only heard some not so interesting unstructured noise, and was soon back with the last of the crazy japanese, DJ Scotch Egg.

His set felt like coming home after I had listened to his album KFC Core a lot lately. It makes me feel insanely happy, I start to jump around and stuff, but at the same time somehow it hurts. It’s all plastic, but maybe plastic is the new real. Maybe not pretending to be serious is the most serious thing to do right now. Maybe I’m writing nonsense, but hey, I’m just trying to describe something really strange, exciting and wonderful. You can hurt yourself with a sharp piece of plastic, too, you don’t need a knife. Through all this time the crowd was completely freakin’. There seemed to be no few breakcore people (my subculture can kick… t-shirts and stuff), but there was no clear distinction between the people who seemed to know this stuff and those to whom it was new. The room was packed from very early on, and people were loving both the known stuff and the surprises. It was a nice crowd, people respecting each other (the security was not so polite).

Somewhere in between Nettle started. I was standing next to the speaker-tower, touching it, sometimes leaning on it, trying to soak in the sound of the strings and the huge bass. This was completely different than the japanese crazyness, more something deep to get lost in, but I didn’t, because rupture’s laptop fucked up and they had to stop.

The one-wonderwoman-show show of Planning to Rock seemed interesting, especially nice projections going hand in hand with her costume, but when I had a look her music was simply going too slow for my amount of excitement.

The grime set of DJ Sheen and Shadetek with Jammer and Ears also couldn’t hold my attention for long. I’m simply tired of men bragging about how hard, big, strong etc. they are, and how weak their rivals. People say that grime developed in a certain way because after the garage party shooting thing many London clubs were closed or didn’t want to take the risk of throwing garage parties anymore. According to this story, grime is what became of the garage sound that was forced out of the clubs, into the airwaves, where listening became all and danceability lost it’s importance. But I’m a dancer. I don’t really get dubstep, too. But it was nice to see how many people new Skreams ‘Request Line’, demanding a rewind more than once this night.

I retreated to some place above the stairs and decided to take a nap which would allow me to be awake & alert until the end of the party (which still was not in sight), but was kicked by a security person who couldn’t be bothered to talk first. Talking to me would have required him to bow down to me, lying on the floor as I was, which of course is too much to ask from a cool manly man like this. This kind of fucked me up for the next half hour or so, cursing and thinking about what to do. I was not able to appreciate Vex’d.

In the main hall it was The Bug & Ras B now, and as much as I love The Bug’s beats, Ras B is increasingly annoying me. I simply don’t want to burn down Babylon, I don’t think Bush is particularly evil (at least not more as any other politician), and even if he was, that would not be ‘the problem’. Americanization, as far as it went, is maybe the best thing that has happened to Germany since it came into existence in the late 19th century (more on why I say this). So everybody but me was dancing to mutant ragga beats. The crowd-pictures are also taken during this set, and at the bottom you can make out Aaron Spectre watching/preparing.

DJ/rupture, No Lay & G-Kid clearly hit me on the right spot, though. Maybe just because I didn’t understand much I could be taken in by the flow, but it’s hard to resist two people spitting simultaneously anyway. And after this picture of No Lay was on the cover of the german electronic music magazine De:Bug most people I know had at least a small crush on her (me included). Rupture’s take on grime was very welcome, especially it’s ‘impurity’, even throwing in some d’n'b at the end, knowing that No Lay has started as a d’n'b MC. Poor girl. She and G-Kid were allready showing strong signs of exhaustion, talking about how tired they were, (at least it looked like they were) asking Rupture to finish and then he puts that d’n'b on and of course she can’t resist.

Ghislaine Poirier was good, but too minimalistic for me this night, I skipped out on Hrvatski, and was completely taken in by Filastine’s rhythm art. Rhythm can be so much more if one doesn’t let oneself be bound by the restrictions of the drum computer. Rhythmic diversity still has to have a comeback in bass music. And electrified as it is today, it will be bigger than ever. Luckily, Filastine is able enough as a musician to overcome those restrictions. What a joyous dance!

(Outside)

P.S. Here is DJ/Rupture’s artists link list, and here is a more detailed description. For more and bigger versions of my pictures check out this flickr page; even more pictures (taken with a better camera) by drop the lime. What happened before.