Blow Your Own Way feat. Alex Smoke @ Colonial Hotel, Melbourne (26/04/08)
If you’ve had the chance to hear any one of his sets, you can understand how Alex Smoke [who’s released work on the Soma/Vakant/Hum+Haw labels) is incredibly hard to place genre-wise. While sometimes pigeon-holed under the heading of minimal/techno, what can be gaged by the reactions of a gleeful crowd at the Soma Corporation* crew’s Blow Your Own Way party this past Saturday, is that he simply knows good electronic music.
The evening began with a showcase of some of Melbourne’s finest, with a live set from Christian Vance that was extremely well received and the follow up from Mike Callander priming the main room for the 2 hours of audio awareness expansion that would follow. To sum up Alex’s set is a difficult task, but I guess what I remember the most is feeling agitated as hell during the four and a half minutes of it I missed waiting for the bathroom, and later not being able to focus on any other tune I listened to on the way home because it simply wasn’t the same. Regardless of preferences something was offered for everyone in an emotive sense, from adrenaline synth and bass, industrial techy dub and glitch to the melancholy melody of something entirely genreless.
There was not a second to feel bored with a beat, as before that moment could occur the next development happened. What sometimes felt like five different songs in a minute, felt like one consistent two hour song at the end of it all. Without a single noticeable mistake made Alex has really shown us what can be done with a live performance, namely the ridiculous spectrum of possibility for reflecting an artists style and diversity. While he undoubtedly had his critics, the crowds reaction to him seemed to speak for itself.
The marathon 6-hour VDJ set from Netzair was doubly spectacular, with the Nano resident showing us why he stands head and shoulders above the run of the mill visual pundits. Sampling developing cross cutting images in sync with the beat really gave a sense of tangibility to the night’s audio entertainment, and keeping in time with Smoke’s bass and snare lines was an accomplishment in itself. And Soma made great use of the newly renovated upstairs of Brown Alley, with the inclusion of plasmas in the main room definitely worth every penny spent.
While the capacity was great for the flow of the event it would have been good to have seen a few more heads, as the joint was never really pumping consistently over the night, and when I turned around at the end of Smoke’s set the place had essentially cleared out. For those who missed out, the Glaswegian mad scientist will be making an encore appearance this Thursday at La Di Da.
angy says...
Courtesy of the reviewer - Alex Smoke LIVE @ Kontrol, San Francisco, (16/09/06), http://www.kontrolsf.com/AUD/Alex_Smoke__Live_PA_@_KONTROL_SF_09.16.06.mp3
soma says...
More Alex sets available from the Melbourne event thread here - http://www.inthemix.com.au/forum/showpost.php?p=391667969
soma says...
Thanks heaps for the review, have to disagree with the last part though - main room was absolutely rammed front to back from 1am - 6am. Side room was pretty quiet for duration though. Anyway hope to catch you all at the encore LIVE performance this Thursday night @ La Di Da (577 Little Bourke St, Melbourne), shaping up to be one very crazy schoolnight in Melbourne-town!!
tben says...
fair enough shane, i guess between the cold and my state of combined disbelief/satisfaction/vulnerability after smoke, i just had to pack it in. good luck for thursday.