With four days to sate the fiends, the easter long weekend is an often pernicious but brilliant one. Not ones to pass up a golden opportunity, the good folk of Ampt Productions brought tech house legends Layo & Bushwacka to the oft abused and adored Empire Hotel for the Sunday end game. Starting at the wee hour of 3pm (wee if you’ve been a busy sprite with shenanigans), Ampt’s Sunday session brought rarely seen sunshine to the dank crevices of Empires middle bar for starting drinks and doubtless more than a few good tunes.
Enthusiasm for an early start was in short supply amongst punters, who didn’t show in great numbers largely until Layo & Bushwacka graced the decks. Thankfully this proved no discouragement for the array of local DJs poised to warm the floor, who all one after the other proved just what a talented arsenal of local talent our city possesses. With motes of sun light still drifting through the open louvered doors of the Empire cocktail lounge, the Schoolyard Dopefiends set to task with the buzzing of electro synths and pound of tech house drums. After a little tuning and tweakery, the action shifted next door into the middle bar where Ian Nearhos kicked off a little later than expected yet not without drama, bringing Claude VonStroke’s remix of War Paint to the table. Proving little inclined to pull back from the tougher house sounds across the board he polished an already great set by finishing off with the Jamie Stevens dub of Angel Freqs’ Nothing At All.
The wash of light from an LCD flanked projector screen competed with some impressive lighting for the prize of most intoxicating. Arguably the visuals won, a combination of live video feeds, ubiquitous fractals and random cartoon scenes that set the ray gun to freak out, whilst SyFi pumped out some chunky upfront house tuneage. He punctuated a bumper funk crop with the free-form techno madness of Cobblestone Jazz’ Dump Truck and Mike Redfern wasted no time in capitalising by bringing things into his favoured deep house groove. Guy Gerber & Chaim’s Milky Way punched like only a tune from these producers can whilst the jacking goodness of the Wahoo main mix of Hang Around by Ben Westbeech provided enough bump to power a brothel for a week.
Not to be cut from the ongoing trend, Scott Walker brought as much poise to the decks as those who preceded him, thankfully having a dance floor to entertain which seemed to be growing beyond the paltry forecast proceedings were predicting. Son of Raw AKA Dennis Ferrer’s Black Man In Space set the standard of flow for Walker who also pulled out the similarly snaking Praise from Art of Tones.
On the other hand, Layo & Bushwacka made short work of ripping into solid and blaring tech house and techno with all the subtlety of Yogi Bear hunting a sandwich in a picnic basket. Though at times inelegant, the crowd loved every bit of the four hours given to the duo who seemed infallible as they pumped out tune after tune with the occasional deviation from harder sounds, most typical of which being Dubfire’s deep space remix of Space Bird from System-7, that sounds less than subtly like Plastikmans Panikattack. Just as damaging was the classic French Kiss and the almost inevitable Not Exactly from Deadmau5, but it was late night paranoia and Jamie Jones’ Should Have Gone Home that dropped dirt back upon the dancefloor, bringing a skillful mood change. Nor for that matter could a quality tech house set come near finished without Samims’ masterful remix of Pier Buccis Hay Consuelo.
The summary? A night well spent.
PaddyWhackd says...
wicked night there was an awesome atmosphere in that small room