Premiere of Kontrol at the End-Up
This past weekend Jeremy, J, Kitty and I slogged off after Jeremy’s Drunk and Horny set to an event I’ve been anticipating for weeks and weeks - the debut of Kontrol at The End-Up. Though I was drunk as a skunk and capable of nothing beyond losing myself on the dance floor, it was easily one of the best nights out I’ve had at that club.
We arrived around 11.45 and the place was already jumpin.’ I think it was Craig Kuna on the decks at that point, though my vision was sufficiently impaired, and I was far back enough on the dance floor, looking through the dancing throng, that I could have been mistaken. We nursed some fresh drinks on the patio before we made it inside for the majority of Kooky Scientist’s set, which I found a bit, um, dull. The tracks themselves were okay, though a bit droney. He was mixing on a laptop (I suspect Ableton Live was the program of choice) and everything went together very smoothly, but there was no excitement to his mixing - it reminded me of when I’m simultaneously at my best and worst. The tracks bled one into another, and there were several times when I found myself coming to a near stop, wondering when it would pick back up again. As Jeremy said (within earshot of Sammy D., who moved away afterwards and caused Jeremy much anguish over having committed a social faux pas), it was the most boring Ableton Live set ever. With that kind of potential control, I would expect a lot more slice-and-dice.
Not so for [A]pendics.Shuffle, who took over the main decks immediately thereafter. Cutting up, shuffling around, pushing the mids on that system to their tweaky limit, [A]pendics.Shuffle brought a substantial charge of energy to the dancefloor that looked ready to carry through to the wee hours. We, however, were not. Most of the evening was a dancefloor haze for me, and I was surprised when we arrived home and it was after 3.
The next Kontrol is January 6 with the legendery Daniel Bell (who first re-configured “bleeps” and “blips” into the repetitive rhythms we’ve come to expect form Ritchie Hawtin and his brethren) and a live set from Audion (Matthew Dear’s super-gritty techno alias). It’s a testimony to Kontrol’s emerging reputation that they can pull in names of this stature, and in their new monthly residence they promise to become one of the major music events in San Francisco, offering the possibility of re-awakening interest in new electronic music for this otherwise moribund scene.
We arrived around 11.45 and the place was already jumpin.’ I think it was Craig Kuna on the decks at that point, though my vision was sufficiently impaired, and I was far back enough on the dance floor, looking through the dancing throng, that I could have been mistaken. We nursed some fresh drinks on the patio before we made it inside for the majority of Kooky Scientist’s set, which I found a bit, um, dull. The tracks themselves were okay, though a bit droney. He was mixing on a laptop (I suspect Ableton Live was the program of choice) and everything went together very smoothly, but there was no excitement to his mixing - it reminded me of when I’m simultaneously at my best and worst. The tracks bled one into another, and there were several times when I found myself coming to a near stop, wondering when it would pick back up again. As Jeremy said (within earshot of Sammy D., who moved away afterwards and caused Jeremy much anguish over having committed a social faux pas), it was the most boring Ableton Live set ever. With that kind of potential control, I would expect a lot more slice-and-dice.
Not so for [A]pendics.Shuffle, who took over the main decks immediately thereafter. Cutting up, shuffling around, pushing the mids on that system to their tweaky limit, [A]pendics.Shuffle brought a substantial charge of energy to the dancefloor that looked ready to carry through to the wee hours. We, however, were not. Most of the evening was a dancefloor haze for me, and I was surprised when we arrived home and it was after 3.
The next Kontrol is January 6 with the legendery Daniel Bell (who first re-configured “bleeps” and “blips” into the repetitive rhythms we’ve come to expect form Ritchie Hawtin and his brethren) and a live set from Audion (Matthew Dear’s super-gritty techno alias). It’s a testimony to Kontrol’s emerging reputation that they can pull in names of this stature, and in their new monthly residence they promise to become one of the major music events in San Francisco, offering the possibility of re-awakening interest in new electronic music for this otherwise moribund scene.