Arriving with plenty of time at the venue, the doors to the Gershwin Room hadn’t even opened yet so I checked out DJ Thief in the front room, who was pumping out some happy party tracks to get the room grooving. Featuring the lovely Eliza Wolfgram, it was a professional and lively set, really starting to set the mood for a huge night. The way the night was run, with both rooms going and a somewhat lax attitude toward the times on the set lists posted around, made it a little difficult to catch all the acts that I wanted to see. But I did manage to witness a lot of quality Australian hip hop acts, which were headlined by two of the most awesome international acts you can come across, along with what it seemed like half of Melbourne crammed into the Espy.
Wan-sixth and Urban Monk have been getting a lot of attention recently with both local gigs and interstate, and it is all well deserved; they are in my personal opinion one of the freshest acts Melbourne has to offer. The lyrics are deep, insightful and meaningful, but also somehow maintain a lighthearted sense of fun. They have a synchronicity together onstage which is truly lovely to watch, and both have a modest and unassuming demeanour that differentiates them from a lot of the generic macho-style hip hop acts out there. Also I loved the Diafrix guys, which I was a little confused about as they didn’t actually appear on the bill, however they seemed to re-appear onstage at a few times during the night. I’m thinking that they were perhaps there as a part of another act, but anyway they are certainly intense and energetic performers who slide smoothly over large beats and connect amazingly well with the crowd.
Another act M Phazes is one of my favourite beat makers around the place… ever. I find his work for some reason just so compelling, and it must be my fetish for awesome bass. There’s a certain frequency that his beats hit inside my head that works so well with my brain. And the whole “featuring” MCs concept seemed to be just that, featuring them for pretty much one track. Nice to see Mantra up there, and it was good to catch Autism, although I was expecting a little more of both. Phrase was all right but I’m still yet to see what the hype about him is about, same goes with Illy.
Now I had never seen any of Peanut Butter Wolf before, and I was much impressed, in fact blown away by what an original and energetic performance that he delivers. Entertaining is an understatement, the visual aspect combined with the music creates a one of a kind show. The eclectic mix of classic tracks he played was phenomenal – who else can smoothly fit together everything from Kriss Kross to Pantera? The back room became very full very quickly, all the way to the back, it was too much for me to try to fight through hordes of sweaty punters to get closer to the front, so I stayed up the back and had a dance and watched the show for a bit, although then ducking outside for ciggies meant I watched the front room start to fill up even more as people started to get hyped up for Mixmaster Mike. By the time Mix Master Mike started, the place must have been close to capacity.
Mixmaster Mike is truly, one of the best DJs in the world. The way that he rocks a set is so smooth, effortless and flawless, not to mention tireless. By this time the crowd was so thick, it was too much of an effort to shove my way closer to the front to watch, so I spent the rest of my time alternating between being hypnotised by Peanut Butter Wolf to trying to find the room to have a dance to Mixmaster Mike. Fantastic night, well done to the Espy for putting it on, and thankyou ITM for letting me have the chance to see it!
mogmac says...
i was way too wasted to enjoy MMM at parklife a few years ago. fukin glad i saw him in a more intimate and and sober setting. truely dopest dj