Grievous Angel

Out to tim dub boy, sam atki2, john hanuman for a FANTASTIC night. The vibe in the club was fantastic, the soundsystem (MUNGO’S 20K rig!!!) was awesome, sweet and earth-shakingly powerful, and the music was… Well, there couldn’t have been any club on EARTH that had better music. Starkey was a revelation. I thought he was going to be really good but nothing prepared me for just how glorious his sound was. It was simply street bass heaven. Grimey, crunky, wonky, wobbly, but unutterably sharp and lithe and rhythmic. The man himself was electrifying behind the decks, hugely animated, utterly synced up to the swing behind the beats and totally communicating that to the crowd who just went mental. There was some serious voodoo going on.

2562 was also superb, a touch of uk funky apparent at first though talking to him afterwards he said he played pure house and techno… But i was fantastic, massive rolling bass and syncoptated skippy beats, similar to the late-set 3:2 riddims kode plays. Very satisfying.

heatwave were as good as I’ve ever seen them, Gabriel’s laptop Serato gear fucked up so no uk funky but rather a towering ziggurat of filthy, brutal, fuck-fuelled ragga played to a warehouse packed with waist-winding punk girls. Their new MC (rubi dan couldn’t make it sadly) epitomised wideboy swagger, he was gloriously in your face. Heatwave take crowds to places most other crews aren’t even aware of and will put a smile on the face of anyone with a pulse.

I had a wicked time doing my set, did 11 til 12.15, the room filled up around 11.30 and everyone was moving. Started with some Jill Scott then into a new dark garage thing, some more garage… Soundclash did ok, not brilliant, though I think people were singing along. Gremino’s Be and See did good. Then into a load of 3:2 ragga techno stuff, which went down really well, culture killer discomix went off (I really think this tune is TOP! It’s on the cd but that’s pretty much sold out now), Show Love went off, mixed into scuba’s klinik. Sadly I couldn’t get my remix of narcossist’s metronome to work, file screwed up. And I think I lost them a bit during the wonky/grime section, but harpy sounded amazing on that system, and playing Big$hot’s Glitch was a dream come true. So it was worth it. And I had time while gemmy was setting up to drop a load of my funky stuff – boy, bristol people really love their funky! So Solid dillemma into agent x into Go Ballistic into Loser – wildness! Finished with my remix of Missy Elliott’s Lose Control and the crowd seemed happy.

funnily enough my fears were confirmed when my fader box stopped working towards the end but it didn’t make THAT much difference but the crowd wanted to dance anyway. And it was much easier mixing when I had monitoring rather than just hearing a wall of bass bouncing off the back wall (if someone could let me know if that garage tune near the start before buck and bury was alright or shit I’d be grateful!).

Anyway massive respect to the organisers, tim dub boy in particular, cos they worked their arses off and they really looked after me. And shout to da Starkbot, you’re a genius!