ITMers with their ears close to the ground may have noticed a new Friday night called Hopscotch launched this week at Uber (back room of the V Bar in Liverpool Street) in pretty low key style (the related marketing term here is soft launch).
In the intimate environment of Uber, residents Two Up, Ed Seven and Pete Dot well and truly proved to a healthy, opening night crowd that they weren’t afraid to jump from one sonic space to another and smudge clearly defined musical chalklines in the process.
I arrived to the sounds of Ed Seven on the decks. Ed Seven is one of Sydneys best kept secrets. Until now the only Aussie to dj on NinjaTunes’ highly influential Solid Steel Sessions has been playing low profile, very select gigs in Sydney. Ed’s skills always serve the music he’s playing optimally and in his opening set classic tracks from MARS (Pump Up the Volume) and Kenny Dope (Rapture) stand out among a number of atmospheric hip hop joints.
Short sharp sets – typically 30-45 minutes each – are the order of the night allowing the guys to get on and get stuck in. Ed tagged in Pete Dot, who like Ed Seven is another DJ with a profile and gig schedule that arguably is much smaller than it should be in Sydney based on his taste and skills.
Starting out with Aim (Just Passing Through), Pete built his first set slowly and moved nicely from some super smooth hip hop into tasty dubby house, with broken beat and nu jazz action also getting a guernsey as he gradually upped the bpms and handed the baton over to the third resident and erstwhile promoter Two Up.
Getting me on-side early by dropping the storming Latin jazz stepper Happy by Max Sedgely, Two Up continued to move all it over the place with a wilfully eclectic opening set that hit a peak with Prince (Musicology), Detroit Experiment and Freesoul style madness (Sugarhill gang spliced with jazzy keys and fat horns = major damage) dropped in short order as time flew by on the back of some excellent music.
Soon enough Ed Seven was back, throwing down some deep jazzy beats and funk style action (think Sunshine Anderson, Red Astaire) with plenty of prime time head nodding action, until special guest Rob Somatik then stepped up.
With Final Scratch running from a laptop providing plenty of tracks to choose from, Somatik took over with his normal enthusiasm, fending off drunken fans and upping the bpms by taking things squarely into the place where dubby house meets broken beats/nu jazz/latin. Artists like Carol Williams, Nikodemis and Osris and Ike Sitgers (Latin Boogie) made for very enjoyable listening.
Somatik kicked it over to Pete Dot, and this time around Pete decided to produce a fantastic original disco set ideal for primetime dance action – the Loose Joints classic “Is It All Over My Face’ a standout cut as always. Two Up came back for his final set, this time classics from Bomb the Bass and Nuyorican Soul featured while Ed Seven then closed proceedings and proved his class by finishing up with more GAMM (Raw fusions bootleg label) style action from Red Astaire – Rolling Stone (re-edit of Erykahs Badus On & On) working a treat next to a re-edit of Q Tips ‘Breath and Stop’.
My first thoughts on the night are the three guys all have distinctive styles that complement each other really well. As the tracklistings above show and a quick chat to Glenn, Pete and Ed during the night confirmed, each resident has a deep knowledge and love of quality music taken from right across the board, with ‘soul’ being the key unifying factor to their night.
If you enjoy listening to a broad range of quality music and djs like The Unabombers, Spinna, Gilles Peterson, Theo Parrish Vadim, Mr Scruff and Coldcut float your boat, then chances are you will enjoy this night immensely.
With solid residents in tow and a nice mixture of both established (Simon Caldwell, Bentley, Huwston Somatik) and up and coming (Eli, Moonshine, Dr Seuss) djs in the frame for action at a very intimate and comfortable venue, Hopscotch @ Uber provides a very welcome addition to the Sydney scene.
