Thursday, December 07, 2006

Goatlab II, Drumcorps plus the Beginning and End of My Disastrous Career as a DJ

Goatlab II has come and gone and well...wow. I think it was a top night with the bar for performances set skyscraper high. Drumcorps set was amazing. I think it has to be one of the best sets I have ever seen. If you don't know, Drumcorps is the metal-mash project of breakcore producer Aaron Spectre. Live, the project consists of him, 2 midi keyboards, a mixer-type thing, laptop – and for the final mosh effect – a guitar. He was late in setting up and this helped to build the hype for his set. So, by the time he was ready, the room was packed and ready. The wait was worth it. A burst of noise from the midi, and wave of sounds that ran down the length of the room. The crowd jumped to his call for metal action. The crowd loved it, they went c-r-a-z-y and rightly so. It was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. R-o-c-k-i-n-g. All that. If you missed it – pah! If you saw it, then welcome to the throng of the blessed. It looks a bit like this:



(Not from Goatlab, sadly, but from Wasted 2.

Now in contrast, Goatlab II was where I had my first chance to DJ. There was a graveyard slot going in the back room and I decided to go for it. To my shame, I did not do my homework so was not on-top of the kit when I started, but was sure I could do something (I mean it's just playing records – how hard can it be?) I started with some classical (The Thieving Magpie) and then mixed it into an ATR old-skool techno track and it all sounded, well, ok. People seemed interested. I played a couple more tracks and after a while the crowed thinned to nothing. (Gone to see Parasite play, I bet...) A bit demoralizing, but I thought I could recover. Then, more people arrived. OK, I thought, time to grab them. So I go back to the Thieving Magpie and they seem interested, then I panicked and mixed (well, sloshed) it into a Napalm Death track. The crowd walked out. Thus was Goatlab II the beginning and end of my disastrous career as a DJ. I'll stick to what I know.

Here's some pictures from Goatlab taken by resident DJ Nim Chimpsky...(Nice one Nim!):

http://www.thebigpicturelibrary.com/Goatlab

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