Soundlab party on Wed night

DJ Lo-Ki (lo-ki@mail.imageinfo.com)
Fri, 21 Mar 1997 14:47:03 -0500


I went down to Soundlab's party in NYC's financial district on wednesday
night and was very impressed, with not only the DJs, but also the Sound
System, and espescially by the visualists...

The DJ lineup (according to the flyer) was DJ Spooky, The Blank Slates,
DJ M.Singe, Soulslinger, Skylab Sound System, Circuit Bible, Ben Neill,
Toshio Fu Manchu, Byzar, Lloop, Wally, & Ambassador Jr.

Visualists were: Javier Michalski, How2, Perer Vocert (Berlin), The
Remains (UK), Illuminati, Art Jones, Kaspar, Gardener (EBN) Chris
Kondek, & Quiver.

The highlight of the night for me was the performance by Skylab Sound
System... Three DJs on SIX decks, and they were constantly mixing in new
stuff... very progressive, along with the usual ambient, beats and
noise, they mixed in The Who's My Generation, John Cougar Mellancamp's
Jack & Diane, and Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water (which incidentally
was about the burning of Frank Zappa's mobile studio since we've been
talking about Zappa, btw check out "Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar" for
great groovy Zappa tunes without the "problematic" vocals.) They really
work well together and have a great level of interaction (they were even
angry at times which is reminiscent of The Who's onstage hostility which
only made the shows better)... at one point one of them got up went over
to another one's mixer and turned off his record! A question for UK
residents... do they often do shows all together at home, because I've
only gotten to see Matt (Ducase?) of Skylab in the past (and he's pretty
damn amazing just by himself!) but the cumulative effect of all three
was spellbinding! (They followed DJ Spooky and I actually caught him
staring at them with his jaw hanging in total amazement!)

Also notable was a live drum 'n' bass performance by Lloop, live DJ and
various instruments performances by Byzar and (I think) The Blank
Slates.

Due to the fact that I had to work at 9am I had to leave by 3am so I
missed anything after that...

Oh yeah, It was really nice to see so many visualists in one club doing
so many differnt things, all the visuals rocked, but I don't know who
did what. Also I think there was someone from Berkely with a thing
called TeleBlimp which was a small (@6ft long by 4ft high) blue remote
controlled blimp which was flying around the space... very cool!

Also it was refreshing to hear abstract music on a REAL sound system
(the kind where the bass hits you in the chest) for those of you lucky
enough to live in the UK, let me tell you sound systems here usually
suck, but this one was outstanding! I could actually hear the
Drum'n'Bass tracks as they were meant to be heard!

alright, enough, but I'd like to hear comments from anyone else who ws
there and who could stay till the end!

peace,

Lo-Ki
lo-ki@pinsky.com
www.imageinfo.com/lo-ki