Psionic's Sonic Assessment
An hour of Thomas Heckman, live on the zox-boxes, along with djs Zero, Coda, Tjaden, LRS, Clint and OMR.This cold thursday had a tiny turnout, but those who did come were rewarded. My martian death flu gave me hell but I dj'd and stayed until just after Heckman played; others carried on late.
The real aim of Sonic Destroyers was to make up for Thomas' foreshortened set at the Eclipse. Somone had stolen one of his effect pedals, resulting in him playing a pissed off 20 minute set. Most of the punters didn't notice, but to a core few it was a severe disapointment.
For those who are interested, his setup consisted of a MC202, TB303, TR808, TR909, a Blue SH101, JX3p, His home made sequencer, a couple of random gizmos he's picked from around the place that make silly noises, some digital effects (quadraverb) and a sixteen channel desk. The 303, 101 and sequencer were his own, but the rest of the stuff pretty much came from analog heads around town (but the 202 was couriered from auckland).
Subteraina
Another crazy situation. The landlord found out about the party the day before it was due (probably due to the posters I'd plastered all over the city centre) and told the organisers that if it went ahead he'd call his lawyer. Saturday morning was spent rushing about trying to find a space.
Luckily, record shop Bassment 45 was glad for us to use their underground bunker (this was where we were originally going to hold Hexanaut, but we thought it was too small) and in went sound, lights and decks.
I was playing a live set at opening (I seem to do that a lot...) so I turned up an hour before and just finished setting up before the first dj came on. I had to program the 101 and set recording levels on my dat without any monitoring. I was sitting kind of between and behind the sound system, so my ears were fine when the shredding scream of an overdriven 101 made a sound like the very fabric of the universe being torn apart, but I'm sure some ravers ran in terror while dj Zero and Johnny stood there, lapping it up
For me this was true spontaneous composition. No planning and no pretence of what I was trying to do. It really was a live sound system.
Kromozone
At the top floor of ESC, put on by dean/bassment/cybernetic. Got in about 2am. Dean was playing. That room doesn't ride bass well, and throbbed every time the lows hit a certain frequency, but the music was good. Missed Tjadens set, but someone told me it was wicked and everyone started dancing.