Time for Shiva-Ura Sound/Dreams Into Harder this coming weekend, and I’m fairly pleased with the tracks I’ve managed to find so far. The idea will be to play some happier breakbeat tunes without going into the wobbly basslines of modern jump-up drum and bass, but there’s still some more work to do before I’ve got a selection worth bringing along on Saturday. Anyway, it’ll be nice to play a post-midnight set for once, and I’m quite looking forward to checking out some of the main floor DJs, too.
23:00-00:20 Nagi♪aka 擂夢
00:20-1:00 Plasmadancer
1:00-1:40 DJ AEMI
1:40-2:20 DJ MERCHEN DIVER
2:20-3:00 DJ 490
3:00-3:40 Abitan
3:40-4:20 Clavia MAXXHEART
4:20-5:00 NEMO
I’m suddenly playing at another event before next month’s NRGetic Romancer – something different, but it could be a lot of fun. This one is the latest edition of Dreams Into Harder, taking place on the 4th floor of trusty old Studio Cube at the same time as a techno/psychedelic event (Shiva-Ura Sound).
It’s a bit hard to tell from a glance at the DJs involved, but this was originally meant to be a happy hardcore/trancecore event – so after having a think about it today I might try playing some breakbeat hardcore (!) for at least some of the set. A few of the tunes I’ve been listening to lately are excellent, and really keep the spirit of old 90s hardcore going…I’m actually looking forward to playing some happier tracks for a change. More news next week, but for the time being here are the lineups:
DJ AEMI（SUNRISE/Sola -Dreams Into Harder-）
DJ MERCHEN DIVER
Clavia MAXXHEART（LuXuRia）
DJ 490（SKETCH UP! Rec.）
Plasmadancer（NRGetic Romancer/FINRG）
Nagi♪aka 擂夢（Colorfulphoria/Karma-業-）
NEMO（Scouse!TOKYO）
Abitan（Gadget）
Wired turned out to be a lot of fun, even if the ‘Hard’ floor was almost completely empty for most of the evening. Sadly my camera was very low on battery, so I just had time to take a video during KA-NA’s set before it gave up the ghost. This was her first ever hardstyle set – not my favourite genre, but luckily there were some really good tunes in there. According to KA-NA it was a mix of hardstyle from all around Europe, with a bit of jumpstyle in the middle of the set to bump up the bpm.
Dairin showed his NRGetic Romancer influences, playing some NRG, hard trance and pitched down freeform. He’s still in the early stages of his DJ career, but he managed to get over a few early nerves to play classics like Alek Szahala’s Chimaera and Mermaid, Rx’s In Memoriam and Substanced’s Freeform Mercury at 160-ish bpm.
I hadn’t seen Take-de-x for a long time, and if anything his current style might be even more technical than it was back in our Hell’s Gate days. This was definitely the most impressive set, mixing-wise, with some tasty transitions halfway through tracks that really showed how much preparation he’d done beforehand. Great selection, too.
DX Pasta finished things off in fine style with his usual uplifting UK hardcore, and even managed to entice a few of the mainstream trance heads away from the White Floor for a while. With only two or three of us left at the end, he sneaked in a couple of drum and bass tunes for a nice encore.
Been a quiet couple of days, but this evening I’m heading off to the latest installment of Wired. It unfortunately means another trip to Studio Forum, but KA-NA is playing her first set for a long time, Dairin and take-de-x are both playing in the harder room, while DX Pasta is finishing the event. I’ll make sure to take some video again this time.
Remo-con’s the main guest in the ‘White’ trance room, so there might be a decent crowd over in that corner, too.
Thanks to the time difference I wasn’t able to catch much of the Halloween Weekender, but thankfully J-Mx’s super-melodic J-Core set was recorded. Once again, he’s done a fine job of showing off the other side of Japanese freeform, and somehow managed to get tunes like Aryx’s Aurora into the mix, too. The final few tunes (t+Pazolite’s excellent Bonds of NRG excepted) are a bit too heavy on the slightly weird synths/over enthusiastic melodies for my taste, but otherwise this is very welcome break from the darker stuff I always seem to listen to these days. Hopefully there’ll be a few more Weekender sets to come…
1. Dj Shimamura – Programmed World Remixed By Sota Fujimori (SF Infected Mix)
2. Dj Shimamura – guntank
3. Utada Hikaru – Passion (Nightforce remix)
4. Voycey & Douglas – Surface of the sun 5. Aryx – Aurora
6. Lv.4 – -237.15
7. Lost Soul – Love can Destroy (Substanced remix)
8. Masayoshi Minoshima – Moonlives
9. t+Pazolite – Bonds of NRG
10. Earbreaker – INVADE
11. Tsukasa – Accelerator
12. FTFX – Hey Teacher! (N68V1) remix
I’ve been looking forward to some video from last month’s La Nuit de Sade event in Italy – here’s one taken during the first of Technoid’s two sets. Great selection in this clip – Proteus, Ephexis & Ting’s Angel of Hell, and Eewol’s Dawn of Hell…and what with the cyber feel/dark atmosphere of the gig (seen a bit better in the above photo) it’s about the closest I’ve seen so far to the events we have in Tokyo.
Thanks to Decion and Jiipez for some info about the latest harder.fi weekender – this time it’s a Halloween special with some great stuff going on every day. The lineups speak for themselves, but still nothing too detailed re. tomorrow’s FINRG special from Lahti. Things start off tonight with some quality names on the bill:
12-19 – Koneradio Studio Special (Decion, Amini, J-Mx, Auacusha, Nomade, plus Sam One & Horzi)
19-20 – Harder.fi Halloween Weekender studio (Jka, SuzuS, Epyx & Cyrez, Syntse, Ozma & xl8r)
20-21 – FINRG special, live from Lahti.
21-?? – Harder.fi Halloween Weekender studio
I’m a week or so late posting this one, but for anyone who missed it this is a very nice sequence from Proteus and Galrav’s b2b set, at the Sade/Fury collab event on the 15th. Headlining was Mr Phil York, aka Bootek, but this set seems to have been the one closest to TYFTH style. Check out the ever-awesome Fist of the North Star – currently getting some heavy play from Guld, too.
Alabaster’s long-awaited second album is almost here, with some more Grimsoul-style nasty synths and trademark Alabaster melodies. This time called Deus, the album is another mix CD with two bonus unmixed tracks. Check out the tracklist on the release page, and also the crossfaded demo of the first 8 tracks here. It looks like the CD will be on sale at the M3 event at the end of this month, and later via sites like Guhroovy and MelonBooks.
Something else that’s really worth mentioning is that Alabaster will be playing a special Live/DJ set this evening on Ustream. Starting at 10pm Japan time, there will be a ‘Live Set’ until 11, then a hardcore DJ set to follow…Alabaster’s sets are always excellent, so this is definitely one to catch.
Many apologies for not being able to do the USTREAM TYFTH last night, but if anyone’s around I’ll play for an hour or so from 10pm tonight. There was a really good crowd at Romancer on Friday (even right at the start), and my set went down pretty well. I played a fair few promos, so this evening I’ll do the same, plus a couple of extras.
