CODEX is getting closer now, and I’m slowly gathering thoughts about my own set – this time I’ll be finishing the event, which has given me some ideas about how to structure things. Still lots of work to do, but looking forward to what should be a quality afternoon of freeform.
Alabaster – 14:00 – 15:00
NONAKA+CHIN – 15:00 – 15:50
Le Dos-on 15:50 – 16:50
Substanced 16:50 – 18:00
raqhow 18:00 – 19:00
PlasmaDancer – 19:00 – 20:00
The second round of the Freeform Awards is up and running, now with the first round’s highest vote-getters in each category. Many, many thanks to those who voted for me in round one, it’s an honour to be among some very high quality names in the ‘Best DJ’ category.
Head along to the survey to peruse the categories and cast your own vote – it should be open for the next week or so, but best to get them in early.
With next month’s CODEX appearing over the horizon it’s (ahem) just about time to look back at the first edition. It turned out to be my favourite event since 10 Years of FINRG, as despite the low crowd turnout the track selection and lineup was as good as you’ll find anywhere in the freeforming world.
The sounds were pure TYFTH from start to finish, maybe best illustrated by the fact that every single DJ managed to play at least one Alek Szahala track (with no repeats!). Let’s hope that next month can match it, and that word has spread enough to entice a few more Romancer ravers out of retirement.
Almost time for the next installment of the Smiling Corpse podcast, this time featuring Dyzphazia as host alongside a mysterious guest. As always the show will get underway at 10pm GMT, and will surely be another quality addition to the series. I’m considering heading along to Tokyo Decadance tonight, but if that doesn’t happen I’ll aim to join the Krafty chatroom crew for some live listening.
Observant souls might have already seen the announcement of next month’s CODEX, but now it’s finally time for a TYFTH look at what will be my first set of 2014. Most of the DJs from August’s fantastic event will return for this one, but organiser Raqhow has also managed the biggest Tokyo booking since Alek Szahala in 2008, recruiting Substanced as a very special guest.
This lineup is looking wonderful then, and again I’m honoured to be playing in such high-level company. It’ll be great to see Substanced after a couple of years, and I just hope the event can bring out the ravers in enough numbers – he has a great many fans here, but a Saturday afternoon start time is pretty unusual and it’ll be hard to predict the turnout. I’ll be doing my best to spread the word over the next few weeks.
Set times and the like will be coming soon, but for now enjoy the lovely flyer design and check the Facebook event page for more info.
The lineup for next year’s 12th anniversary FINRG spectacular is now public, and features just about every Finland-based FINRG artist plus UK freeform standard bearers Ephexis. This time around the event will be held at Helsinki’s Venue, meaning there’ll be plenty more room for dancing/enthusiastic stomping than at Senssi Lahti last year.
It’s already shaping up to be a fantastic event, but there’s also some very sad news – Epyx & Cyrez have announced that it will be their final Live PA. It’s hard to overstate what a loss to the scene their step away from freeform will be, but for now let’s look forward to their last couple of club appearances, as well as some unreleased tracks that are apparently on the way.
I’d love to be at 12 Years myself, but we’ll have to see – as is usual each February I’ll be getting out of Japan post-haste, but still not too sure how close to Finland I’ll be. Definitely not an event to be missed if at all possible..
Here’s the full lineup, for the rest of the event info check out the Facebook event page:
EPHEXIS (UK)
PROTEUS
ALEK SZÁHALA
PAIN ON CREATION
DJ RX
SUBSTANCED
NOMIC
EPYX & CYREZ (last live pa ever!)
TYRANOID/STRONGSTREAM
MACIO
MZA
ALCHEMIIST
HORZI
YEDIAH
YAYA
MASTATRON
ILLUVIAL
BIG MISTAKE
VJ MOVE
Another quick post, this time to announce that my Smiling Corpse set is now up on the FINRG SoundCloud – hopefully this’ll introduce a few more people to the newer tunes on the tracklist, as well as give a little extra exposure to Smiling Corpse. Wyrm’s set is also on SoundCloud, and you can find it here.
The typically farcical Hardcore Heaven awards have brought plenty of complaints from our scene, but the heroic folk at the Freeform Forum have ridden to the rescue with their own version. The open vote will run for a couple of weeks, and it’ll be fascinating to see what results it throws up – head over to the voting page to make your choices. There’s also a dedicated thread on the Freeform Forum itself which will surely be worth keeping an eye on.
Many thanks to everyone who tuned into last month’s Smiling Corpse podcast, and equally hearty thanks to Wyrm and the SC crew for the invitation to play – as always I’m hugely grateful for the support. The entire show has just been added to the Dead Happy archive, so let’s take the chance to look back at the two sets.
Putting my mix together was traumatic to say the least, as I did my very best to strike the balance between using sections from recent club events and not ending up with a structureless Frankenstein’s monster of a set. Personally I think I fell into that trap with Episode 7 of Munted! Monthly, but this time I considered how to use pre-existing stuff much more carefully and am far happier with the end result. Having said that, a few days before the deadline I hacked out 6 (!) tracks and had a proper (if manic) rethink, as it clearly didn’t have enough melancholy or relisten value.
As always, a massive thanks to the artists and labels who provided tunes – these sets couldn’t happen at all without your help. This time I was sold on Gestaltzerfall as an intro track the moment I heard it, and either by DJing sixth sense or blind luck (I know which one’s more likely) Prelude was the first tune I tried as a mix. Happily, Prelude has been a backup connection for the Freedom – Rise – Dilapidated section for a good few months now, and that really inspired me for the rest of the set. Fatal Flashback and Afraid was a recent find, while I’ve been playing around with the Neon Circuitboards – Gravity’s Rainbow – Darkstar section since Munted! in London. After much back and forth, I finally decided on Helix – Mohicans as the finale after playing the preceding 50mins a few times in practice. There’s just enough nastiness to link them both to the rest of the set, before heading off into that magical, melancholy direction.
Of course the set’s far from perfect, but given my time restrictions these days I was really glad to see how some of the Krafty listeners enjoyed it on the night – it made all the hair-tearing and kickdrum-induced headaches worthwhile. By the way, a couple of the ‘CDR’ tracks here are headed for release (or at least, announcement of a release) very soon indeed, and will likely sound even nicer as here I used unmastered/older versions.
01) Guld – Gestaltzerfall [CDR]
02) Epyx & Cyrez – Prelude [Electronica Exposed]
03) Proteus – Freedom [CDR]
04) Thanatos – Rise (Render Regalia remix) [Allkore]
05) ikaruga_nex – Dilapidated [Fukyagaku Hardcore] / ikaruga_nex – Dilapidated 2013 [Freeformatted]
06) Carbon Based – Fatal Flashback [FINRG]
07) Nomic – Afraid [CDR]
08) Twisted Freq – Alien [Electronica Exposed]
09) Qygen – Neon Circuit Boards [CDR]
10) Betwixt & Between – Gravity’s Rainbow [Hardcore Tano*C]
11) Alek Szahala – Darkstar [Electronica Exposed]
12) Betwixt & Between – Ultra World 6 [CDR]
13) Blender & Nomic – Battle of Dawn [CDR]
14) Twisted Freq – Saturn Atmosfear [Volatile Digital]
15) Aryx – Helix [CDR]
16) Alek Szahala – Last of the Mohicans (Remix) [CDR]
Let’s not forget Wyrm’s fantastic second hour though – his set was full of unexpected twists, from hard techno to psy via plenty of unreleased SC material. After a timely Happy Birthday, Wyrm went heavy on the harder tracks (Rhythmic Tool being a standout for me), followed by some quality new freeform. I hadn’t heard Custom Built DJs’ Pneumatic or Qygen’s superb remix of Tendrils of Reality before, while it was lovely to hear Qygen’s tribute to Betwixt & Between – Kimura Kaoru no Densetsu – being used so effectively in a set. Add Dodomeki to the list and you really see the strength in depth of Smiling Corpse’s upcoming releases. Some typically nutty psy has also been very skilfully woven into the set, making this a genuine must-listen if you didn’t catch it at the time.
01) Flute Guy – Happy Birthday
02) Mechanical Brothers vs. Instigator – Frozen Hell [Cannibal Society]
03) Wyrm & Surtr – Tesseract [Electrode]
04) Greg Notill & Slugos – Rhythmic Tool [Cannibal Society]
05) Tyranoid & Strongstream – Stalingrad (Osmo Remix) [FiNRG]
06) Greg Notill – Conscient but Denied (Instigator Remix) [Kube Records]
07) Custom Built DJ’s – Pneumatic [F/C Smiling Corpse]
08) Anon – Manix#1 [F/C Buzzin’ Bootlegs]
09) Cosmic Lizard vs. Metahuman – K-Jah! [Lunatic Alien Records]
10) Ikaruga_Nex – Dodomeki [F/C Smiling Corpse]
11) Qygen – Kimura Kaoru no Densetsu [F/C Smiling Corpse]
12) Oxidaksi – White Weirdo [Cryptic Symmetry Records]
13) Substanced – Reptile Zoo [FiNRG]
14) Wyrm – Tendrils of Reality (Qygen Remix) [F/C Smiling Corpse]
Dark Dimension’s Halloween edition was a massive affair held at Shinjuku’s Christon Cafe (which also houses Decadance Bar), bringing together a pretty special lineup from all corners of Tokyo’s darker scenes. After a typically arduous few months of mainstream Tokyo I’d have loved to attend, but luckily we have here an awesome 45 minutes of Hiroyuki Takahashi’s live painting session for those that missed it. I’m a big fan of Takahashi’s work, and his live appearances are always amazing. It’s probably worth mentioning that the accompanying performance (while fairly tame for events at Christon) might drift into NSFW territory as things progress.
The bonus here is that Guld starts his set from around the 9.40 mark in the second video. Settle down for 25 minutes of classic Guld, with plenty of Romancer classics alongside some newer tracks (including Gestaltzerfall) and some brilliant crowd reaction. Great to see that the audience is still there for the harder genres, and that Dark Dimension is growing with each new event.