Midweek Mixes (17/05/23)
Savage Special!
A run-down of some of the mixes and radio shows that have been soundtracking my existence – from the box-fresh to the tried-and-tested – all guaranteed to brighten up your week.
Welcome back to Midweek Mixes, this time with a Savage Hanoi special! I wrote about my experience playing at this wonderful club back in January, including the foggy isolation of the Red Cube booth in the main club room. Well, the Red Cube is where each of the below sets was recorded on two different Savage nights in April, as these three party starters from the United States — South, West and East — took to the decks there in the week following Equation Festival aka the Big Mai Chau Cave Rave. If you think the last thing anyone would want to do after a two-night rave in a cave would be to do it all again in a club, then you clearly haven’t met these guys.
Bouffant Bouffant @ Savage, Hanoi (15/04/23)
This set is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I played with Brett at his “feral dance party” Gimme A Reason in NOLA last year and I’m a firm fan of his stuff online, so I know a little of his range, but this recording hits me on a different level. On this particular night he was opening the Red Cube from 10.30pm onwards but there is Zero Fucking Around as he smacks us with Middle Eastern chug, arpeggiator- and siren-heavy italo fire and distinctly Vietnamese-sounding cymbal clashes — and that’s all in the first 15 minutes.
Every track is brimming with an energy that’s both playful and serious, the pinging almost nonsensical melodies of one track complemented by the filthiest of basslines on another, analogue and mechanical all at the same time. The transition at 23 minutes conjures tech house propulsion out of a kind of deep freestyle; the track at 41 minutes is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve heard recently — didgeridoo, mouth harp, flutes and all — and yet it somehow makes total sense; and the mix out of that track shows off a characteristic I wish I had more of when playing out: PATIENCE.
That’s the real winning element of this recording. Amidst the mayhem of all these insane “what is this?” dancefloor-moment tracks, Brett holds on to the things that elevate a DJ set beyond mere selection: patience, tension and release, an understanding of the drama of the unexpected. It’s mad to me that this was only the first 85 minutes of the night at Savage. I’d have lost my mind before midnight. “It sounds the way a really good makeout sesh feels” reads one of the comments on soundcloud, and I’m not sure there could be a higher — or more accurate — compliment.
Mez @ Savage, Hanoi (15/04/23)
Representing LA, Mez played later on the same Savage night that Brett opened, meaning this recording picks up around three hours after Brett’s left off. It’s only an excerpt of the full set but it has enough going on to be worth a listen, not least the symphonic Detroit banger it opens with. Sure the track sounds pretty overdriven — I imagine not only because the sound had been turned up over the course of the night (no limiters for Savage), but also it’s just that kind of record — but that only gives it extra punch. This is unadulterated Marty Bonds-style machine funk and exactly the kind of thing I want to hear at 3am in the morning.
From here, Mez leads us through wonky drum trax, driving Tribal America house, a couple of Robert Owens moments, the ambiguous emotion of Sha-Lor’s ‘I’m In Love’ and, finally, back round to machine funk with a firecracker of a transition around the 40 minute mark. To put it rather bluntly, sound quality-wise these older records often sound like shit compared to the shinier, more modern beefed-up tunes in Brett’s mix, but I think that’s what gives them their power and authenticity. It also makes me wish all the more that I’d been there on this night, to hear the full spectrum of sounds and eras of dance music as the party unfurled.
Markus @ Savage, Hanoi (20/04/23)
Listening to this set reminds me a lot of my own DJing and the puzzles I try and solve when playing out. My impression — at one month and two continents’ remove from the event itself — is that Markus spent the first part of this set finding his feet, feeling out different moods and energies from the innocent freestyle of Connie to tough EBM/cold wave, from DJ City’s driving ‘Sophie’s Theme’, which only gets about half of its runtime, to Noel Williams’ early electro classic ‘Fall Out’. It’s a kind of survey of dance music’s building blocks and selection-wise it really resonates, but at times it feels a bit rushed. And because not all the transitions hit, it can come off as a bit jukeboxy.
These are all questions I struggle with myself and of course that’s also what a warm-up is often like. It’s also totally appropriate for an 11pm dancefloor that’s only just beginning to fill up, but for me the set really lifts off once he leaves the songs behind and moves into deeper, chunkier, more textural territory. From around 45 minutes in the transitions become more confident and you get the sense of someone settling into their groove. The next 20 minutes lay the groundwork for the next big moment, Mu’s ‘Paris Hilton’ and Major Problems’ ‘Overdose (The Final Trip)’ one after the other. I then love the funky stepping combo at 1h20m which leads into a truly dreamy and trippy moment, as the next track filters out into underwater silence before slamming back in again with a siren. A hardcore-y electro-y wave-y sequence sees us out — who could ever say no to Velodrome and Olive?