Friday, January 1, 2010

Happy New Year!

For my 2009 nightcap, I went to Decibel Festival's New Year's Party. On the bill was Lusine, Nosaj Thing and Apparat. Lusine's set was blisteringly fantastic as he played all familiar material (mostly off of A Certain Distance), yet skillfully remixed and reworked. This is another bit of evidence proving electronic music's progression past its old stereotypes of cold, redundantly reiterative and lacking a fluid live feel. The directive to dance is still there, but now artists are working out of the box and into new open fields. Nosaj Thing certainly can rock it and he was up next. Without any resignation or hesitation, I can certainly say he was irritatingly choppy at times, enough so that his set was underwhelming. Surely, Thing slammed down some chunky tracks of his hyrbid HipHop Funk, including a couple that my friend and I agreed are new tunes, but not enough to overcome his addiction to choppy tricks that can kill the groove. Then Apparat closed out the night, though we didn't make it all the way through his set (too tired). He threw it down for sure, even including some of the more slammin' dancefloor wreckers from the Moderat project. My personal favorite from that project is "Seamonkey" and he put it through the grinder and came out with a splendid live version. All in all a fabulous night and New Year's. Hopefully, your's was as successful.

No comments: