Espionage, intrigue and white fluffy things. All there! Plus an ice-melting, regime-busting lineup and much free vodka. Naturally! The Smirnoff Experience secret parties may be no more than cleverly choreographed publicity stunts… but what impressive stunts they are! Novelty is always going to be a winner and this night was a long troika-ride away from the mundane, starting with a top secret venue, the requisite ‘black ops mission’ to win tickets and the whole fun and games of alerting punters by text (thankfully not encrypted) to exactly where in Siberia the event was actually being hosted. Yep, this was definitely one of the most unique club nights I’ve ever been to! As it happens, the “Secret Bunker of Corrupt Capitalist Debauchery” was on this occasion located at the Forum in the Fox Studios Entertainment Quarter.
So, once we’d received our instructions and commando-rolled all the way to the drop zone, my comrade and I were ushered into said bunker by very nice Russian Secret Police (the usual security must have been on a slow train to Vladivostok). Nadia and Tatiana handed us casino chips to barter for drinks and set us loose in the winter wonderland, where we were distracted for quite some time by more lovely ladies in furlined coats (so white and fluffy!), Mikhail Gorbachov (true, I swearto you) and the three Forum bars, each stocked exclusively with Smirnoff gear. My personal fave was the downstairs ‘Moscow Bar’ where Xenia Onatopp traded your chips for Smirnoff ginger-lime cocktails called Sputnik Smuts (made that last bit up… but the rest is completely true).
Hang on…is that music playing? Great Gorby! Over there on that big stage people. Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton were cracking it on the decks as the Jedi Knights, and were doing their absolute damnedest to hype up a crowd who were clearly not there for the music. The JK’s pumped and prodded, impromptu MCd, hell they even dropped a bit of Kanye West. Gold Digger was one of their more effective weapons… The crowd went spaz at last.
With DJ Yoda’s set on the way, it was set up funky free-jazz mix of the Star Wars’ Mos Eisley Cantina Theme. You know the one. Lame that the momentum was then lost by a 10-minute gap before DJ Yoda’s setup was ready. I forgive him though, he was lining up to expose us to his world famous, hugely anticipated ‘Magic Cinema Show’. Yes, Master Yoda has taken his elite turntablist skills, and applied them to film as well as sound, so now he can scratch and mash both at once. And how? The Force? Nope, not this time. It’s all about the newly released Pioneer SVM-1000 mixer. It’s a music mixer and vision switcher rolled into one, especially designed for club DJs. I’ll resist the urge to bang on about technical specs, except to say that just one of the SVM’s many amazing features is a text generator…. Useful for writing stuff like “Hands in the air Sydney”. Never know when you might need that one.
The lights go down. Images appear on the big front screens and side walls. The 20th Century Fox Theme starts, then the mighty John Williams Star Wars theme, and the screens roll out the classic Prologue scrolling title sequence with just a few small differences. “Episode V – Magic Cinema Show. It is a dark period of turmoil for other DJs. Yoda has set out to mix and scratch DVDs, the likes of which have never been experienced before. His techniques are all performed live, so sit back, crack open your popcorn and prepare for an audio-visual onslaught. Check it out. Yoooooo!” That’s what it said.
What a freaking treat! A smash-and-grab barrage of every imaginable tune, clip, sample and movie grab, all synced up in some of the coolest and funniest AV ever. Beatbox dude vs The Fugees, a drum n’ bass Simpsons Theme, little baby ‘still-black’ Michael Jackson singing with the Jackson 5, Wiley’s She’s Wearing My Rolex with images of Paul McCartney and the chick with one leg, the original Super Mario theme with gameplay graphics, the shower scene from _Psycho, Count & Sinden’s Get Me On My Bleeper, DJ Yoda’s namesake smashing out the breakdance moves (dude, we’ve seen him handle double lightsabres, so we’re not buying this ‘tired old muppet’ crap). Whoah! It was a non-stop onslaught of ‘trainspot the tune’ and ‘guess the magic film’ often both at the same time. Exhausting really! I guess the only drawback to all this wizardry was that you get so dazzled by the rush of images that you forget to notice Yoda’s elite Jedi music skillz, which is what it’s supposed to be all about really! I also found that so many movie grabs in there, the music mix was riddled with inevitable stops, starts, drastic pace changes and stutters, which became pretty tiring pretty quickly, and I started to long for Infusion. But the Yodes soon rounded it all up with a localized nod to his Australian fans… Chopper Reed’s weather report, and wedding scenes from tragic Australian soapies…. Ahhhh, definitely more vodka required!
And at long long last, came the set that I’d been utterly busting it to see. Infusion. Mmmm… Infusion playing one of their first live gigs in Australia for over a year. The wait tonight seemed oh so very long. But we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep. Jamie, Frank and Manny have been working on a new album that’s due for release soon, and this was our very first chance to hear some of it live. They finally hit the stage and let loose, undaunted by the diminished ‘not there for the music’ crowd and the fact that their set was going to be cut short by 20 minutes! And they made a small group of keen fans down the front (myself included) very, very happy little beans. “If you don’t wanna dance you can rock to it, if you don’t wanna rock you can dance to it”. They were joined onstage by Pip Branson on guitar and Tarek Smallman on drums, giving their sound a full and much rockier feel than what you’d expect from listening to their albums. ‘Pure dance’ tracks from Phrases & Numbers were ravished by the rock beast, as were Girls Can Be Cruel and Natural from Six feet Above Yesterday. Brilliant! They also previewing some spanking new visuals made for them by John Warwicker, who’s produced the Underworld live show visuals for the last decade. Infusion’s live shows have always been a different creature to their albums…. both equally brilliant experiences, so based on tonight it’s a little tricky to predict what the new album will be like, except to say “great” and “I really like them”. Can’t wait to hear what they’ve got in store.
The iron curtain dropped on the Smirnoff Experience at just 1am. Probably a good time for an alcohol-sponsored event held on a school night to wrapup. Picture Infusion playing at your Year 8 disco and you’ve pretty much nailed the crowd ambience of the final half hour or so. And then think again about the idea of Infusion actually playing at your school disco, and go yes ... But an ‘experience’ this has been in every way, with more adventure than a Lana Rally to St Petersburg, more great drops than Yuri Gagarin’s pressure suit, and more twists than a Smirnoff martini, shaken not stirred. Up there for an imaginative and unique night Smirnoff. I promise on my corrupt capitalist honour to be sober in time for the next one.
Finchy84 says...
BASSLINE!