Long an oasis for interesting underground and alternative sounds, Frigid have really begun to crystallise a captivating grass roots electronic scene in Sydney. ITM’s Calico sat down with a magazine and Sub Bass Snarl’s Seb Chan.
Brown NYE takes a couple of steps further than the rather muddy footsteps of the last couple of Frigid New Years… Dung, Flush, I guess this takes things to their logical conclusion. I asked Seb why Brown? “Basically it’s another in our series of cheap, light-hearted NYE events we’ve been doing since 1998. We’ve always done these events as a low cost alternative to the hype that generally surrounds NYE and do them with our friends Seymour Butz & Gemma (from Kooky and now Uber Random). Last year we found a toilet on the street on the way to picking up the PA and plugged the smoke machine thru it for the night… It was a moment straight out of that 80s sci-fi horror flick Ghoulies…”
Surprisingly, he continued that “unlike what you might expect from us usually, Brown and it’s predecessors have been filled with ludicrousness and silliness, and we’ve even been known to close the night with our own interpretation of ‘anthems and classics’ – generally meaning LFO, St Etienne, Bassheads, all circa 1991, and some early jump up jungle circa 1993.”
“This year at Brown we will be doing our Frigid Sound System thing which is basically Sub Bass Snarl and Sir Robbo playing one-on-one and Ozi Batla on the mike. With this sort of setup we traverse jungle, dub, dancehall, hip hop, electro, techno, house and pop pretty rapidly as we try to out muscle each other on the decks. Seymour Butz will play his usual crazy kooky electro; The Herd’s offshoot Bass Elefant (The Herd without laptops) and Ollo will be playing live earlier in the night; and downstairs Prince Valium, Ollo, and Clark Nova keep things even more diverse playing basically whatever the feel like to keep it rocking. And, we roll in a big Freaky Loops style sound system into the Hopetoun to beef things up. And, best of all its an early starter (8pm) and early finisher (2am) so you can either retire early (like us oldies) or rock on elsewhere. Given now the popularity of Field Day the pleasure of a 2am finish is even better.”
Seb and Luke from Sub Bass have been been closely involved in electronic music in Sydney for a long time. I was interested to hear where they see things at the moment. “I think things are in a bit of a holding pattern. Music has generally stagnated and we’re getting new versions of old things. It reminds me of the late 80s before rave broke so I am confident something new will happen, however what it might be I have no idea. As I wrote in my summing up of 2002 for 3D world, the new sound that was supposed to shake things up still hasn’t arrived. Instead the once banished garage rock has returned and in the short space of a few months the small interest the media had in dance music as an oppositional force, has dissipated. Even my own excitement in new music has been diminished over the last twelve months. There have been a few interesting releases and plenty of average records but the indicator of the decline is that the most enjoyable records of the last year have been reissues of rare funk, soul, reggae or late 70s and early 80s no-wave. Outside of that, for the third year in a row the guilty pleasures of the year have come from ‘urban’ r&b – not even indie hip hop… Not surprisingly then the interest this year (and last year) in versioning pop songs – if pop has been the most interesting place to listen for ideas then this makes perfect sense. Bastard pop, mashups, bootlegs – the craze has started to dissipate as the shock value of most of it’s tactics has been somewhat reduced. One of the most positive things to come out of this phase has possibly been the blooding of new producers and the rapid adoption of complex computer-based production tools for predominantly pop-driven ends. And as dance music regresses further towards the twin vortexes of authenticity as genre (house, techno) and authenticity as lifestyle (J-Lo claiming she’s still Jenny from the block; and Jurassic 5 wanting to take things back to a ‘golden’ age), its these new production tools and their spread to home computers in the hands of 14 yr olds that holds the most promise for the next few years. Because it is those 14 yr olds who won’t care who Derrick May or Kraftwerk or Grandmaster Flash or even Dr Dre were, who will be able to shake up something new.”
There have been a lot of comments recently about scarcity of quality music at the moment. Seb countered that “there is good stuff out there but it’s all on microlabels or big gloss pop tracks (Nerd, Missy, Ms Jade, etc). The middle ground has been squashed and so you have a situation where lots of little things are going on but nothing big and unifying to bring people together other than manufactured history lessons. That said, the access to music provided by the internet is now more than it ever has been before so it is much easier to buy things from microlabels now and bypass the selective ordering blindness of local record stores where necessary. I’m still finding a lot of exciting music both for dancing and not-dancing too so there’s no shortage of good stuff, just no direction.”
I guess the underground electronic scene has always been around in Sydney with peeps like vibe tribe, clan in the 90s and going even further back. But by giving it a regular weekly home, year in year out Frigid seems to have made a real difference. “A regular night is really important to keep things alive.” Seb commented, “It acts as a focus point and a meeting place. At the same time, from a promoter perspective it’s been a difficult year and as for all Sydney clubs we’ve had a bit of a downturn in crowds. I think people get a bit lazy sometimes and forget that if they want things to continue they have to support them – and that is even more important for underground events.
With their fingers in so many pies at any one time, I wondered what’s in store for the future. “We’ve been busy doing our new national magazine Cyclic Defrost and also organising two series of events for early 2003.” Seb said, “The first of these is a trilogy of special Frigid nights at the Sydney Festival with Martini Bros (Germany) and Hermitude on Sunday Jan 5, Koolism vs Frigid on Jan 12, and DJ/Rupture (Spain), Mark N and The Herd on Jan 19. The second set of events is a series of 4 Friday nights at the National Museum in Canberra with Katalyst & Koolism (Feb 7), Prop & Toby1 (Feb 14), The Herd & The New Pollutants (Feb 21), and Scanner (UK) & Andrew Pekler (Scape, Germany) on Feb 28. It never stops for us.”
In closing I asked Seb why ITMers would part with their hard earned for a dip in the Brown. “Our NYE events have a good reputation for no-fuss, no-attitude fun… and they are cheap and have certain benefits in finishing early at 2am. We take a lot more liberties on NYE with our production and people get a diverse and entertaining night out rather than predictable or overly-banging music.”
Catch Sub Bass Snarl, Sir Robbo, MC Ozi Batla, Seymour Butz, Wudan Funk, Ollo (live), Bass Elefant (live – Herd spinoff), Prince Valium, Clark Nova and a few surprise guests at the Hopetoun on New Years Eve. Tickets are available from Fish Newtown and Good Groove for $15 + Booking Fee or $15 from Frigid or the Hopetoun Hotel.
