More Guld news – BRK has just revealed the flyer for this month’s Massive event, and it’s looking great. There’s sure to be more info coming soon, but initially seems like it’s a different venue to the last Massive party, with regulars BRK, Plus, AKT and Child of Sorrows joining the god of NRG himself.
This has definitely been a long time coming, but fans of Betwixt & Between’s Zusammengehorigkeit should rejoice – it’s finally seeing a release, thanks to the ALiCE’S EMOTiON label. The added good news is that if you’re thinking of buying the album for this tune alone, then you’ll probably be extremely happy to see one more Betwixt creation in Crevice’s tracklist. Stairway to Solstice is the other tune, making this one slightly more value-for-money than the usual arrange efforts. There’s also some more great artwork and a couple of very nice wallpapers on the album’s release page too, if the fantasy anime style floats your boat.
Saturday was my first THC, and it turned out to be a storming event – I was expecting a lot more speedcore/other undanceable genres, but it was mostly dark and nasty gabber, plus Technetium’s slightly incongruous Happy/J-Core. It was probably getting on for 1am by the time I finally arrived, so I’m not sure what was happening in the first couple of hours – but I was just in time for Stanfield’s set, one of the main reasons I was keen to get to this one. Relatively slow for gabber, it was a great set even if there were a few technical problems towards the end. Most of the tracks played were new to me, or I didn’t know the titles, and so Technetium’s set was pretty welcome. It took me back to my brief spell of mixing Tano*C-style Japanese hardcore a few years ago, and I picked up on some RED ALiCE classics, especially.
Of the other DJs, Kanon again played a great hour or so, with really top-class mixing and excellent selection. She played Lunch’s recent Tokyo Hardcore Construction track (heard in the recent promo video), and while I didn’t know many of the tunes, there was a fantastic track around the halfway point with a long female vocal/guitar breakdown, mixed in at just the right moment. Lunch was as good as expected (actually the first time I’ve seen him play live, I think), although I actually missed the changover from him to NDE, through a combination of dancing like a madman and recovering next to the air conditioner. Anyway, they played one of my favourite gabber tunes at some point – featuring the vocal line ‘Clap your hands if you want to die!’, the title escapes me right now…but truly a classic for all the family, that one.
I forgot that THC actually runs until 6am the following day, so this was a long night, even with my late arrival. It’s a great event though, and a few of the NRGetic Romancer crowd also made it along. Next one is January 2009.
Here’s the first news from this month’s NRGetic Romancer, and well worth waiting for – DJ Yousuke’s solo set. This could his best set for a while, and the first few tracks are just fantastic, building up a brilliant atmosphere. I haven’t got a tracklist handy, but it’s mostly UK-styled freeform, and even if you’re not into that sort of thing I urge you to give it a listen, it really is good stuff.
Download here
I have another mix or two waiting in the wings, and so if/when I get permission, those’ll be on the upload too.
Not long at all now until Guld’s second appearance in Finland, and he’s recently posted up the excellent flyer design for the event at Helsinki’s Sade (I don’t know how to type the ‘special a’, sorry). Playing alongside Proteus, Neon, Friik, Inch b2b with Triton, and Tritium, not to mention Kuroshio Current, it looks like a great event in the making. Those of you in Finland, make sure to take lots of photos/video for us back here in Tokyo.
The flyer for December’s NRGetic Romancer is all ready, and it’s yet another great one for the collection. As we’ve already mentioned, Android Lime is the ‘NRG Friendship DJ’ for this event, joining all the regulars for the last Romancer of the year.
Speaking of flyers – work is underway on the effort for next month’s Hell’s Gate, and it should be well worth waiting for. Coming soon…
Electronica Exposed definitely doesn’t do things by half measures. As well as the long-awaited release of Full Circle Recording’s Big Kisses and Darkness, we have the sixth and final release in the Kreatrix series, a wide selection of interesting looking tunes in Plundered Vaults, UK freeform in Electromagnetic: The Complete Works, and finally volumes 3 and 4 of Electronic: The Complete Works. That’s an almost unbelievable list, and just shows what we’re going to miss when EE finally shuts up shop. There are too many great tunes to list in their entirety, but check out the Electronica Exposed site for enough tracklists to sink a very big ship.
Incidentally, Big Kisses and Darkness’ release means that DJ Yousuke and Buzzmasta’s awesome Spiral Life (plus the Invader remix) has finally seen daylight – it’s definitely up there with Halcyon as one of my favourite Full Circle tunes.
There will hopefully be some material from the last NRGetic Romancer to post up before too long (where have I heard that before), and it seems like there were actually a lot of new tracks played, not only from Betwixt & Between.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure when this was going to be official news, but Guld has just announced that South Africa’s Android Lime will be playing at the last NRGetic Romancer of 2008. Given Android’s mixing style, it continues the same line of hard NRG guest DJs from Proteus to Lab 4, and also Adam/DJ X’s solo appearances. He’s sure to go down well with the NRGetic Romancer crowd, who are very familar with that kind of dark and hard mixing (we have Guld playing every time, after all), and so it should be a great event alongside the regular DJs.
A new batch of releases are just out from Hybridize, including a pre-release two-track CD from Nightforce (and Substanced). Featuring the absolutely fantastic Raindrops and the pacy hardcore Do You Love, this is really a must-listen. A few other tracks are now available via the FINRG shop and Trackitdown, including Sam One’s The Future, Substanced’s Geneva and the Swoosh vs Carbon Based remix of DJ Air’s Alone With Me. All great tunes, and highly recommended.
It’s been a good week – I’ve just joined the new FINRG sublabel, Hybridize, as a ‘Hybridize DJ’! Joining the other new recruits, producer/DJs ROB.O.T.T and Nightforce, I’ll be doing my best to push the new Finnish sound in this corner of the world (while pushing the Japanese sound back in the other direction). It’s really an honour to be connected with artists/DJs as great as Epyx & Cyrez, Nomic, Swoosh, Substanced, Sam One, Horzi…the list goes on. I’m starting to think about next month’s Hell’s Gate now, but after that I’ll be sure to bang out a few new mixes ASAP to celebrate.