Soundbaked Sundays feat. Steve Lind @ Trinity Bar, Canberra (09/11/08)
A warm weekend ended with the return of one of the hottest events last summer, Soundbaked Sundays. I remember the launch of these parties last year being one of the best and craziest days of last summer. I’d been looking forward to my favourite party making a come-back since the weather turned winter this year, and after a ridiculously enormous turn-out to the Melbourne Cup party at Trinity Bar, I worried that everyone would have done their dash before the weekend. Not the case.
A sizeable crowd gathered in the Trinity Bar beer garden early afternoon to catch Jemist’s summer-fun set of funk and hip hop while the smell of the BBQ drifted welcomingly. An hour later, after the sausages, steaks and vege-kebabs, the meaning of having ‘eyes too big for your stomach’ hit home. Everyone lazed around in the heat with coronas, mojitos and other cocktails remiscent of ‘tropical island’ chilling that Trinity has become so damn good at. I took a seat to settle with two straws in a karaf of ‘kill bill’ before 2005 ACT DMC champ DJ Just 1 spun his last hip hop record and welcomed current Aussie champ DJ Perplex.
Hip hop, hip hop, hip hop, baltimore. That was essentially the afternoon musical running sheet of the Soundbaked Sundays launch. Some disco would’ve gone down well early on, but at least the contrast between Jemist’s ol’ skool funk/hip hop and the more current stuff coming from Just 1 and Perplex kept the genre interesting. The highlight of Perplex’s time on the turn-tables was an impressive six minute display of sc-scr-s-scratching before he set the night-time party tone, switching on the baltimore breaks with Diplo’s Betty Davis Eyes.
After Perplex brought the sun down, the party was taken inside Trinity Bar for Chinese Laundry resident Steve Lind. I laughed as the Trinity staff scurried to get all the speakers inside in time with the movement of punters. Every last piece of equipment was connected just as Lind dropped the King’s of Leon anthem Sex on Fire, getting a dramatic response from a grateful crowd. Wow. Where does this guy get his ideas for starting a dance floor? Just goes to show how switched on Lind is when it comes to people-pleasing.
We then heard Let Me Clear My Throat for the third time that day – quite a few popular tracks got ‘high rotation’ accross the sets of at least two DJs throughout the party. This is a little gripe I carry at festivals, yet thankfully don’t see it happen much at smaller events. It happened a little too often on Sunday. Otherwise, the set of decade-crossing party anthems was original and recognisably ‘Steve Lind’. There were mash-ups aplenty, era themed montages and baltimore remixes before straight-up electro/house crowd pleasers.
The best way I can explain Lind’s set it by listing a sample of tracks played one after the other: Where’s You Head At? (Baltimore remix) into Lady Gaga’s Just Dance, before dropping a bit of Deadmau5 and finishing with Daryl Braithwaite.
I know. It was pretty special.
One problem with an entire set of party tunes? They make people jump up and down. The problem with that? One very wet dance floor. By the time Lind had finished the floor wasn’t sticky… it was flooded.
The crowd had waned just before Lind finished as the first day of the work-week fast approached. Everyone was exhausted after almost 12 hours of dancing a drinking and quite a percentage had been caught out by the sun, glowing a fine shade of “embarrassed lobster”. The final party people kicked on through Frat House Phillips’ electro tunes, but it was time to admit that the party was over. I went home smiling and satisfied that Soundbaked Sundays are back at Trinity Bar, as fun as ever. Time to take back Sundays!
