Defending Vadim

Scott Tennent
Thu, 09 Apr 1998 10:50:24 -0700 (MST)


hey all

So the ninja tune tour passed through arizona last night (can you believe
it? ARIZONA!!) and let me tell you I was excited to hear Vadim what with
all the talk lately. Here's a run down of what happened:

Got to the club around 9.45, and the place was not at all filled. Seemed
strange to me, then, that the ninjas went on as early as they did.
Chocolate Weasel either didn't play at all, or they had the 9:00 slot
which is a shame. (actually I didn't care much to see them anyway, but
its a shame that the touring artists got the worst slot.)
Neotropic came on at 10, and she wasn't too bad. Pretty mid-tempo stuff,
lots of atmospehrics, good graphics accompanying her set. People were
still in the process of showing up though, so the reaction wasn't
impressive.
Next up was Herbalizer, and contrary to what seems the popular sentiment
of others on this list who already caught the show, they were the
definite low-light of the night. Ollie went up for the first half hour
and Jake did his thing for the second half hour but they never played
together!! Just extremely simple, boring, poorly mixed sets. I was still
towards the back drinking while Ollie was spinning, but when I went up to
watch Jake, it seemed to me like he had a real hard time getting a feel
for the crowd, and was therefore jumping genres like crazy (leading to
poor mixing). He was just playing records, ho hum.
And we found ourselves at the prime slot, midnite, and here was DJ Vadim.
I must say I'm sorry he was off in Vancouver because here in Arizona he
was the shit!!! He opened up with a DJ Krush track (the one from the
Mo'Wax Headz 2a comp.), pitch down. Later in the set he also played
another Krush track from Milight, as well as a Portishead song from Dummy
(sorry, I'm bad with titles), and that song "3 is the magic number" from
Schoolhouse rocks, all with the pitch control turned down low. FUnny
thing was, to my ears, things sounded sped up. Odd. The highlight for me
was when he used four turntables at one time!!! He had a great hyponotist
record with guy saying things like "now slap yourself all up and down
your face," etc. on one table, a tonal record on the second table, then
he layed down the beats on the third table, and finally scracthing like
mad on table #4. Blew my mind.
And at 1:00 am we found our minds blown some more as local boys the Bomb
Shelter DJs (radar, z-trip, and emile) did the 3x5 scratch fest! THese
guys by far had the most energized set of the night. Seemed to me that
Emile was having problems with his tables in the middle, but that was
taken care of and more or less unnoticable. These guys are getting a lot
more national exposure and they deserve it. most of you already have the
return of the Dj comps and deep concentration, so you've herd what they
can do. Z-trip also has one or two 12"s on Ubiquity so check 'em out.

SO that was the night. It's hard to say who I liked more between Vadim
and the Bomb Shelter, but they defintely made the night worth it.

By the way I got the Vadim mix tape but have yet to listen. I'll let you
know how it is. (and if anyone is in the mood to maybe tape trade this
for a copy of kid koala's tape fro last year, PLEASE email me)

scott