Saturday night 9pm heralded the start of the third monthly meeting of tech heads
anonymous – otherwise known as Minimal X-Posure! The Velvet Lounge hosts the
evening on the last Saturday of each month and with the increasingly cold weather
comes a surprising number of minority group members. Clubs such as the ‘Back In My
Day..’ Association, the ‘If it ain’t Tech/Electro/Minimal it ain’t Music’ Collaborative and the
‘I’m Getting Too Old For This’ Crew were all well represented.

Apart from it being a regular evening the night which is presented by Looney Choons
and FARQuadrant was paying homage to one of it’s soon to be departing Resident dj’s
and old man of music – Dave Clark. MX boasts a rotation of about six residents as well as
special guests and kicking off the proceedings last Saturday night was one of them –
Goose – maybe by name but not by any means an indicator of his talents! A rolling
mixture of deep house and deep tech, Goose started off slowly and then brought it up a
notch with warm and flowing beats from labels such as Treibosoff and Stock, Aitken and
Waterman – of Jason and Kylie fame..okay – maybe not the last one!

Taking up the reins next was MX virgin – Jason Burton of Esoteric fame. Adding a bit
of broken beat to the mix Jason whacked out a couple of Klang classics – this German
techno thing is catching on! By this stage the Velvet Lounge (behind the Flying Scotsman,
Beaufort Street, Mt Lawley for those not in the know) was filling up nicely. Lots of heavy
breathing and drinking warmed the room up most effectively! Pity the poor freezing
smokers who were forced to feed their addiction outside. Jason definitely got an A for
effort but perhaps a C for consistency – a little choppy for some punters.

Next up was absolute trouper James A who – above and beyond the call of duty had
given up a night as guest judge at the Miss Nude Australia Competition to fulfill his
commitment to the men of MX. Okay, some will be questioning his sanity at this point but
I assure you, he was able to put this tragic loss out of his mind long enough to deliver an
impressive example of delicious german minimal at its best. Usually found whipping the
crowd into a funky house frenzy elsewhere, James A delivered a selection which even
had the die hard minimal music snobs at the bar nodding their heads! James A favours
Playhouse records and I spotted a couple of their offerings as well as some Perlon
records material too.

At this point of the evening it was time for the man of the hour to step up – Mr Dave
Clark, soon to be departing for the UK, vinyl wish list in hand, not to return for some
time!! Looking round the room I spotted an MX resident and all round nice guy who
seemed to be doing his best Darude impersonation.(of Sandstorm fame) Who is cutting
these boy’s hair!? Back to the matter in hand..Dave Clarke borrowed some boompty
from Brett Johnson and showed us all how its meant to be done! With his departure
imminent, does this mean the MX boys will be looking for a replacement resident?
Perhaps one of the Q-Bert lookalikes skulking around the bar would be an asset to the
team?! During both Dave’s and James A’s sets – a mysterious person who seemed to be
channeling Banarama appeared next to them, took a few photos and disappeared again.
Whispers went around the room that perhaps they were to be Mr April and Mr May in the
Perth DJ Calendar but alas no.

It was a little hard to follow what happened next and for those amongst us that were
giving their drinking arm a workout there was no hope! It was Jason Burton then James
A then Jason Burton again then Dave Clark then each for himself into what can only be
described as a dj salad! The soundtrack for the evening took on some interesting shades
of ‘now hear this!’ and the experimental section of everyone’s collection got a dusting off!
Anyone who gave up trying to guess the sequence had an entertaining array of eye
candy (which was screened on the wall behind the dj booth throughout the night) to
soothe their straining brains. Very cleverly done it featured all sorts of things people like
to look at while listening to satisfying beats and drinking alcoholic beverages. The dj’s
themselves even appeared occasionally – all well airbrushed – it is in their contracts
apparently!

I stumbled off well into the wee hours, another Saturday night well spent. For those
wanting a slice of the action I recommend the following activities – warm up your neck
muscles and head down to the velvet Lounge next month on the 29th of July for the next
edition of Minimal X-Posure with a special side order of Canadian Guest Star!. Or catch
the residents and others on Looney Choons the radio show, every Friday night 1am –
6am RTRFM 92.1.