Only a few days until NRGetic Romancer now, and as I still haven’t seen any sign of the photos from the event, I thought it might be worth quickly posting up some of my hazy memories along with some YouTube videos, for those who haven’t seen them yet.
Android Lime was playing there as a guest, of course, but the rest of the DJs also did a great job as always. I only caught the end of gokuraku and Yuusuke’s set, but recognised a couple of schranz numbers from their previous sets. Great warm-up material, once again.
Cogi is usually the cameraman at NRGetic Romancer (hence his rare video appearances), and Soham also seems to have missed his set, sadly. This one was a lot more slanted toward hyperspeed psytrance, with only Oyagokoro BPM and (I think) Hellfire representing freeform. It was a brilliant set, but the structure of psytrance tracks is quite difficult to second-guess if you don’t know the tunes. I’m learning though, and Instrumental is still my favourite – definitely psytrance, Hase-syle. Of course, Cogi can’t play the next event, and I can exclusively reveal that his replacement won’t be playing much psytrance… It’s a real shame, as the crowd are getting more into this new style of his with every Romancer.
Full Circle DJs were great as usual – I was away from the dancefloor though, and heard most of the set from afar. With Yousuke on guitar once again, there was a lot of power added to Buzzmasta’s weird effects/percussion. Yousuke has mentioned that they will be approaching things a bit differently this Saturday, so definitely looking forward to that. Above is a snippet of their Hellfire remix, a really rough and ready tune.
Betwixt & Between played a few of his newer tracks in another brilliant set. The tune in the video above in obviously RR-ThermalForce’s Moving Flare, but this is the Betwixt & Between edit. I’ve actually had an edit of this tune since last year sometime, but this one is extra melancholy and differs from the original a bit more. The kick also sounds nice and hefty in the video, so maybe some changes have been made in that department too, who knows? For those who haven’t seen Betwixt’s sets in any detail, this gives a great idea of what they’re like….it’s pretty disturbing stuff with the mask/sound/gesture combination, no? He also played Tankobu Hesotarou no Hourou at a nice high bpm, Dust to Dust and…more that I can’t remember right now.
Android Lime’s set was heavy on the promos and was definitely doing the business by the end of his hour. The opening tracks were slower bpm but featured some awesome synths, and as things sped up people got more and more into it. The video above shows Android mixing from BRK’s excellent I Kissed A Girl into Android’s own remix of Code of Silence, definitely one of my favourite parts of the set. DJ Rx’s Eternal Cannon went down really well, people don’t hear that much so it’s still got that freshness to it in Japan. Speaking of DJ Rx, his new track In Memoriam also did some damage towards the end of the set – I always like the way Android speeds up towards the end for some variety (Guld/Proteus style), and it was a good choice this time too. The crowd definitely enjoyed it, and the b2b with Guld also went down incredibly well, with Unholy Word and Hannya8000 being a couple of the biggest tunes.
Great work from the Android, anyway, and he took a ton of video himself – so I wonder if we’ll be seeing some of that anytime?
Guld’s set was fantastic, and included the Proteus remix of Adam Lab 4’s Psychopath, one of my favourite tunes last year. The Proteus version sounded amazing, and hopefully I’ll get another listen this weekend. I especially loved the freeform section of his set, especially hearing Pan on Creation’s Thru 2 Secrets on the Cube speakers. I’ve sometimes thought of playing it, but wondered if it might be showing its age a bit. Not at all, it sounds amazing….Guld told me afterwards that he just came across it totally by chance in his CD case, and thought ‘Why not?’. He also played the ever-fabulous Last of the Mohicans, and Venla, which has to be the perfect end of the night….check out VX Pasta’s brilliant visuals in the video at the top of this post – it was about 4.45am, and summed up the mood perfectly.
That’s about all I can remember….but better than nothing, I hope? Fingers crossed that we can get the sets recorded this coming weekend, I think they were for this one. Congrats once again to Android too on definitely making his mark in Tokyo.