London based D&B night Essence Of Chi teamed up with CIA Records to take over Gramaphone on Thursday night, with S.P.Y, Zero T, Total Science and Subterra providing the sounds for the night at the Shoreditch venue.
I'd never been to Gramaphone before and was thoroughly impressed by the venue all night, upstairs it's a hip, typically Shoreditch, bar with the club downstairs. We got there at about 1130 and just caught the end of Subterra's set, and were just in time for S.P.Y. For me, S.P.Y has always been a bit hit and miss, some of his tunes are massive, others mediocre at best. On Thursday however, he destroyed the place. The direction he's taken production wise is just right, all his recent (unreleased as of yet of course) material features penetrating drums and rolling, crackling basslines, a la Spectrasoul, Break and Noisia. He got the dance suitably hyped before man like Zero T stepped up to take control of the 1s and 2s.
Zero T bossed it typically! A couple of tunes in, he dropped some next remix of Pharoahe Monch's banger 'Simon Says', which standardly murkled the dance ;-) Definitely one of my favourite producers at the moment, and also one of the most respected in the scene (he's top of everyone's list to work with, including Rockwell and Alix Perez). He mixes up styles nicely as well, playing everything from deep rollers to crunching techy tracks. If you haven't caught one of his sets then do so asap. He never disappoints!
Total Science, followed by FD b2b Script, rounded off a sick night in Shoreditch, keeping the dance bubbling til the early hours. Essence Of Chi got it bang on point with the line up and venue, although the sound in there did leave something to be desired, but no one was complaining! If you're in town for the next one, go check it out, they've got Artificial Intelligence coming down, as well as friend of the blog Ant TC1, Survival and Subterra. Should be large!
No comments:
Post a Comment