Club Club pres. Kazu Kimura @ Chinese Laundry, Sydney (22/11/2008)
On one of the busiest weekends of the year for Chinese Laundry, Japan-via-Brisbane-via-Spain’s techno maestro Kazu Kimura delivered yet another faultless performance at the legendary venue. This was his third time visiting in two years, and it was by far his best performance of the three. Anyone who read my review of his set from August last year will perhaps wonder if it could even get any better than that, but let me assure you, this was ten million shades of awesome.
Unfortunately terrible traffic from the Booka Shade show in Enmore robbed me of seeing all but about five minutes of Matttt’s warm-up, but judging by the sizeable crowd in the room that he practically had in the palm of his hand, and the nod of approval from Kazu as he took over the decks, it was of the usual high quality that we have all come to expect from Matttt.
Kazu’s set was, to put it, in a word: “fuck”. I’m really not sure how many times I or the completely astonished group of techno junkies up the front of the room uttered that word, but it’d be enough to make even Eddie Murphy blush. And I’m pretty sure my chin got gravel rash because my jaw was pretty much perpetually on the floor thanks to his enviable technical skills. Starting off with stripped back percussive tech house and minimal, Kazu slowly but surely worked his way through some tougher, bouncier cuts like Rejected’s Cliché, Audion’s massive (and somewhat forgotten) Mouth To Mouth, and a new Nihad Tule & Lasseman release on Truesoul, before building his set to an intense climax of crunchy, chunky, relentless techno like Cirez D’s ball-tearing remix of Total Departure by Christian Smith & John Selway and Len Faki’s twisted reworking of Raudive’s Here.
Club Junque, fresh from warming up for Booka Shade, took care of closing duties, and having seen him play earlier in the night, just proved yet again what a talented, versatile DJ he really is. Realising the crowd really couldn’t handle much more punishing techno (our feet were swollen, our backs hurt and I’m pretty sure most of our brains had fallen out through our nostrils), he switched things up and went for a more melodic, progressive approach. There was a nice blend of new tunes and classics, including Bedrock’s massive Voices, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard out in club since I started going out.
Yet again another night of quality underground music in our beloved Cave at Chinese Laundry thanks to top-notch local and international talent. I only wish I’d been able to catch all of Matttt’s set and get the hat-trick of proper underground shiz.
ehcoroche says...
mmm kinda makes me with i had skipped booka and gone straight up with laundry goodness, hearing the end of mattt's set made me wanna hear the whole lot real bad, but thats life, kazu was tearing my face off in the best possible way