Carpet 8th Anniversary @ Nada Temple (18/03/22)
I had a bit of a dilemma when I started my set at Carpet & Snares’ 8th Anniversary party at 3.30am on Saturday morning.
I had done something quite uncharacteristic in the lead up to this party, which was to decide preemptively that I was going to play fast and hard music (or at least my definition of fast and hard music) regardless of the situation in the moment itself. I wanted to start around 134bpm and only get faster, and to play a lot of electro, breaks and techno records that I own for a reason (I like them a lot) but rarely - if ever - take with me to gigs. I stray into this territory occasionally on my radio show (e.g. here) and often after a few drinks at home, but at the gigs I get booked for it never seems that appropriate. When was the last time I played a 138bpm Luke Slater banger in public? Maybe never?
But this gig was a bit different. Firstly, I’d be playing for only 90 minutes at peaktime. As I’ve written about before, this in itself was a good enough reason to have a firmer than usual battle plan. Secondly, I was going to be playing after Steffi & Virginia, so I knew the room would be full of energy right from the word go. Thirdly, we would all be playing on the new Pequod soundsytem at Nada Temple, a tumescent orange monstrosity that looks like the final Pokemon evolution of a Void setup. In pictures it looked impressive, in person it was truly Bosch-worthy, and it felt like a suitable vehicle for some proper music.
Two weeks ago, then, I started pulling out records, some of which hadn’t seen action for getting on for ten years. I also ordered my Rekordbox collection by bpm and had fun relistening to tunes that I usually play on -8 but this time put on 0. I had a few practice runs, pulled more records, filled a shoulder bag with 30 or so and felt pretty much ready.
Of course things don’t always go as planned.
Perhaps my biggest error was forgetting something I spend a lot of time complaining about other people forgetting, which is that speed does not necessarily equal energy. To me it sounded like Steffi and Virginia played most of their set below or around the 130bpm mark, yet the energy in their selection was huge - big big house tunes infused alternately with rave, acid, hi-NRG, bleep, you name it. It was mixed with class and even though the room wasn’t all that full it built up a frenzied vibe. The new soundsystem is clear and punchy, though it loses some body feel if you stand too far forwards. Clearly it belongs in a much larger space. I spent their set just over halfway back and to the side, which seemed to give the best trade off between clarity and body feel. I danced the whole set.
A couple of years ago the challenge of following this would have given me a huge amount of nerves. I flash back to going on at The Breakfast Club in summer 2019 and shaking so much I could barely put the needle on the record. Since then I’ve gained enough experience and confidence that I don’t need to worry about totally bombing, so I wasn’t particularly nervous, but I was feeling a bit of regret about being so rigid in my planning. Portuguese crowds are notoriously resistant to anything non-4/4 and the prospect of trying to convince them with electro and breaks after Steffi and Virginia had served energetic ravey house up on a plate was not a particularly appealing one. But I’d made my bed and had to lie in it. As I played I noticed how some of the crowd was into the techno and ghetto house, and then became a bit confused - some to the point of leaving - whenever I put something less obvious on. Maybe I exaggerated a bit (I know Plug’s ‘607’, for example, isn’t for everyone) but I was also glad to see that at least those who stayed in the room were properly into it.
Another issue that quickly became apparent was the way the system and setup magnified the difference in punch between old and new, and digital and vinyl. It can be difficult to untangle what exactly the issue is with certain tracks, but combine vintage production with poor mastering and 30 year old vinyl and you can bet there’ll be an unpleasant drop-off of energy compared to shiny new tracks mastered for digital. So Ali Berger’s ‘Sun’ and Anz’s ‘Inna Circle’ sounded fat and punchy and full, while Conemelt’s ‘Wide Bertha’ and Gamma Quadrant’s ‘Cubic Rube’ sounded respectively rather muddy and thin. When I played things like ‘Electronic Warfare’ by UR I really had to push the gain and EQs on the vinyl to try and even out the sound vs the CDJs, and even then the fluctuations were painfully noticeable to me. It made think I need to start being a bit more serious about ripping and potentially mastering rips of my records.
(I was reminded of seeing a DJ I admire a lot playing at a festival once and the changes in oomph from one track to the next visibly sapping the energy from the crowd, even though the tunes themselves were all great. It seems big systems are simply not lenient when it comes to this particular issue.)
A big highlight for me was finally playing ‘Virtual Party Tool’ by DJ Aquatraxx & 3PA out at a party - pure ecstatic joy at 141bpm - and also finding space for Leftfield’s ‘Storm 3000’ from Leftism, an album I’ve been revisiting a lot recently. Lowlights included cueing up what I thought was ‘The Secret Garden’ from Luke Slater’s X-Tront only to discover once I’d mixed it in that it was actually ‘Colonial Space’. Of course, compared to the less immediate stuff I’d been playing earlier, the crowd actually really liked this no holds barred onslaught, so they were happy with my mistake even if I wasn’t. I managed to put it behind me by mixing out quite quickly into ‘Blasting Soul’ by Interferon, a piece of full-on techno that is nonetheless tempered by emotional synth work. (This was from an upcoming reissue on SAISEI records - listen in to Flamingo on Wednesday for more from this compilation.)
I left the party with mixed feelings, but with plenty of new data on the never-ending process of Learning How To Be A Good DJ. This was one of those instances where in the push-pull of Me vs The Party I was more selfish than usual, doing what I wanted to do and less what might have actually worked well. That being said, I didn’t clear the room completely and I also did a reasonable technical job, despite the challenges I mentioned above. I also felt good about playing some music that quite possibly won’t have been heard in Nada Temple before.
This coming weekend I have a rather different proposition in front of me: four hours at Panoramabar, sans giant orange trumpets but hopefully with a crowd who are up for a bit of variety. Last night I played a load of records and felt really good about it, so I have to assume that the pre-gig crisis is due maybe on Wednesday.