I’m back from Roppongi, and a pretty unusual Muon event. It was great to meet all the DJs, but over half the event was hard house/schranz of the light variety, with only A10 Device, SHINOSAN and myself playing harder tunes at the start of the night.
A10 Device’s set was really good, playing very hard THC-style gabber, but as an opening set to this kind of event it was always going to fall a bit flat. Add in the delay of 10 minutes caused by the incredibly unhelpful staff (one very professional guy excluded), and A10 Device did a great job to keep it together. SHINOSAN also played a nice set of slower Hard NRG/schranz, including Hellnight and DJ X’s Hannya X remix. He also went to town with the video-taking, getting about 10 minutes of each DJ, so some of those might be coming later.
As for me, the lack of prep time and an unfamiliar venue added up to it not being a great set, to be honest. I’ve hardly had a moment to think about it, and the connections weren’t very good…most of the tunes are classics, so the selection was fine, but instead of the requested 170bpm+, 160 would have been a lot better. Pretty bizarre at the end of the set too – with me playing The Most Masochist at 175bpm, Rock (the next DJ) asked me if I could drop it to 140 for him to mix in the next set (!). I shoehorned in Last of the Mohicans and tried dropping the bpm in the breakdown down to 160, then eventually 150…..what a weird experience.
Anyway, the tracklist:
- Nomic – Desolated Dreams
- Alek Szahala – Caballo
- Betwixt & Between – Liberation
- Alek Szahala – Invitation
- Rank 1 – Airwave (Betwixt & Between remix)
- Alek Szahala – Lagash
- Twisted Freq – Innocence (AMS remix)
- Alek Szahala – Voices of Babylon
- Betwixt & Between – Zusammengehorigkeit
- Betwixt & Between – Nemesis
- Epyx & Cyrez – The Most Masochist
- Trevor Jones – The Last of the Mohicans (Alek Szahala remix)
As you can see, I was anthem-bashing a bit…maybe the most interesting one is Liberation, the second Betwixt & Between track I ever heard. In the right set (which this probably wasn’t) it will still sound great, so I’ll definitely be using it again. Finally, big thanks to DJ AEMI for inviting me to the event, and especially to Eirik for making it along when all the other guests pulled out….just a shame I couldn’t come up with a better set for him this time.
As always – Some interesting choices.
Theres only one tune in there i’m not 100% sure on. That’s the AMS remix of Innocence, it’s not a bad tune… Just nothing on the original. 🙂
Never thought to put Airwave into Lagash. Does it work well? I know Airwave has quite a short outro and Lagash has quite a long one… Into that really ‘splashy’ sounding breakdown. Gooooooooood tune ;D
Chip>
Yup, I agree with you about Innocence, but the remix is good for ‘surprise value’ when the new melody come in (plus it mixes well after Lagash). Seemed like most of the people there on Friday wouldn’t have heard the original either, though, so that might have been a better idea.
Airwave and Lagash are in different keys, so it’s definitely not one for a studio set. I did the classic hard house/trance thing, and cut the bassline of Airwave as soon as Lagash’s started. I hate doing that, but better than the train wreck of the basslines clashing…
Plasmadancer> lol yeah i know that feeling… If you listen to Freeformensaundi – The mix from Venla Pt2 and Black Mamba, the two melodies clash like nothing you’ve heard before lol.
Mixing in different keys is not necessarily a bad thing. There are LOTS of mixes in Freeformensaundi that aren’t in key. Its just listening to the basslines and melodies and deciding whether they coinside very well or not. Obviously Airwave and Lagash aren’t going to use all the notes in their key, so its just seeing what notes in each key clash, and avoiding them in your mix 🙂 there maybe only one note in each key that doesn’t fit into the major/minor triad, dominant or subdominant. 😉
Chip>
Good post 🙂 Yup, I know what you mean, it’s just when you have two tunes with only the bassline playing you’re a bit more limited…
I try to mix in key as much as possible, but of course out of key is fine as long as you watch out for the clashes – and once you start paying attention to the dominant/subdominant etc then you can get some next level harmonic stuff going on 🙂 The other good thing is that it makes you use some tunes in a set that you might not have otherwise thought about!
Personally I reckon (some) melodic dnb DJs are quite a bit ahead of us when it comes to this kind of thing, check out this set from B-Complex for example: http://www.dnb.sk/upload/media/dj-mixes/B-complex-Different_Kind_Of_Masochist.mp3
I’m not into all the tunes (although his own tracks are great), but it’s pretty inspiring how he sticks to the relationships between keys…