Awesome club moment #2 | I discover what hardcore is about with the DJ Producer and friends

Here’s one about a DJ who toured Australia. The occasion was the DJ Producer (read the comments behind that link to get an idea of what many hardcore techno gabber types think of him) and while musical instrument-playing purists may argue one particular old chestnut — that to play pre-recorded music is not a ‘proper’ gig — this was a monster occasion in every sense other than the fact that there weren’t a bunch of people on a stage playing stringed instruments. On the other hand, it was a club venue (Inflation), so I’m counting it as a Memorable Club Moment.

The DJ Producer smashes Melbourne

The DJ Producer. Not actually in Melbourne in this photo. Pic: Discogs.com

There are a couple of reasons why this night remains memorable, despite the grandiose volume of alcohol consumed and the fact that it occurred almost10 years ago.

In 2007 (yes, it was that long ago) I had kind of started to get into hardcore techno, gabber and breakcore. I had genuine dreams of DJing this kind of music at actual club nights and (perhaps somewhat naively) I made a point of purchasing a whole bunch of this music on vinyl. I was determined to somehow be the real deal, whatever that was, and, as this still the pre-streaming-everything or even pre-everything-is-on-YouTube era (remember, YouTube only started in 2005), I refused to torrent download any music. I would build up my Totally Awesome DJ Collection one record at a time, learning Mad DJ Skillz with each new acquisition. Because vinyl records.

As a direct consequence, my general knowledge and understanding of gabber and hardcore techno remained extremely limited. Specifically, what I knew of gabber and hardcore was mostly on the relatively few vinyl records in my collection, which usually got listened to while actually DJing in my bedroom — in other words, only two thirds of each record would actually be heard, since the rest of them had to be cued up. On the other hand, I had an unsurpassed knowledge of all the first 32 bars of some bangin’ electronic tunes.

As a mid-20-something on my first full-time income, any lack of common sense was made up for with boundless belief and enthusiasm. And since I actually owned releases by at least three of the people on the bill, I felt I had totally found my calling.

Why was it so great and memorable?

It’s a terribly clichéd pursuit in post-show accounts to rattle off DJ names and smother each one with slightly different but otherwise indistinguishable dollops of saccharine adulation. Instead, I’ll list the acts I had looked forward to seeing and explain what was truly great about each one.

PaulBlackout

Yes, PaulBlackout is apparently the correct spelling (as compared to Paul Blackout).

He plays heavy and dark drum n’ bass — and at this gig it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I’d never been to a drum n’ bass night, let alone a hardcore techno gabber night, and here was a guy who played the former while not shying away from the latter.

It was on this occasion that I discovered that drum n’ bass — when it’s good — is wonderful owing to the fact that it’s bizarrely accessible. If you want to dance, anyone can move at whatever speed works for them — and if you add an entire new level of crashing heaviness on top of it is becomes music that anyone can headbang and mosh to, at whatever speed works for them. I’m a metal head at heart (and so is Paul apparently) and this was unequivocally an immensely heavy set.

Incidentally, I love the Desolate Ways EP, especially the monster first track.

Mark N (i.e. Mark Newlands)

Mark happened to be the person that sold me most of my vinyl and I can genuinely say that, if asked, I never got a bad recommendation. I’d seen him play two or three times prior and came to realise that no two sets were ever the same.

What got played was what someone else at a later and unrelated show once described (are you following me?) as “the definition of breakcore”. No doubt Mark would cringe at such an epithet (and possibly say something acerbic), so allow me to clarify first.

The conversation I’m referring to occurred on another occasion with someone I met, at another venue, after a breakcore gig at which Mark happened it play. At one time, after talking about music we liked, this person mentioned how breakcore at its best was when everything got thrown into one ugly mix — techno, drum n’ bass, hip hop, pop mashups, ‘humorous’ samples, turntablism, and everything else.

And that is what got played. Savage, dark and heavy drum n’ bass one moment, rave-speed hip hop the next, dropped on top of something filthy and nasty and terrible doing near 190bpm if not more, and many other things in between.

The DJ Producer

Up until I attended this gig, most of the industrial music I’d seen played out relied heavily on the audience knowing how and when everything went together. These 4 on the floor dance tunes generally had a start, a middle bit, and something at the end to tell you what to do next. Not so with the DJ Producer.

It was hard. It was fast. It was intense, crazy, and it took heavy music to a whole new depth I never realised could be reached. There were breaks, there were thunderous passages of fist-bashing techno, there were moments where it was toned down just long enough to let you catch your breath, before it resumed once more at full attack speed.

This was electronic music and it was heavy like I’d never known. And when it was over I clapped and cheered with the rest of the audience, breathless and sweating from such a roaring set. I was overjoyed that I’d found something that spoke to me so darkly, yet I was also saddened, for “heavy” for me would never quite be the same.

So this is what this music is really about, I thought.

Then some time afterwards, I was told, on good authority, that the DJ Producer’s set was comparatively tame.

Wow.

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Awesome club moment #1 | That time the entire club danced to Skinny Puppy

If you love EBM and industrial music then chances are that at some time you either have or even continue to frequent clubs.

Clubbing — paying cash to enter a licensed venue where people dance, party, drink and sometimes even talk — is pure indulgence at its glorious best. Your eyes get a sensual treat. If you’re into the music, so do your ears. It’s hedonism, adventure, debauchery and gratification all in one. And, you know, you’re young and cool.

On the other hand, it’s not like your health improves. Your finances take a battering. Staying up late and waking up tired doesn’t help your weekend (no wait, you’re still young and cool). And then for some there’s the whole finding oneself and searching for an identity, a phenomenon so prevalent in fringe counter-cultures — but that’s a discussion for another time.

There is of course nothing wrong with the gratifying pursuit of pleasure. It’s just that, as time goes on, all those late nights in dark rooms begin to blur. One can drink and dance and party but it’s the memories that matter. As Lemmy Kilmister once said: “All men are equal when their memory fades”. And as time progresses, they grow just that little more distant.

And yet, sometimes something from the club-days occurs that’s brilliant and memorable enough to stick with you. Like…

#1: That time the entire club danced to Skinny Puppy.

Not the actual club described here. The Das Bunker crowd was presumably more likely to dance to Skinny Puppy.

Call me jaded, but depending on the night there was a time when playing industrial music in small, dark, sweaty venues meant getting accustomed to seeing a great many of people — usually sitting down and standing by the side of the room and not dancing.

One could dedicate an entire study to the gothic paradox, whereby dressing up makes one feel fundamentally confident and dark and foreboding and shockingly anti-conformist on the crowded 11:55pm train into the city — yet somehow one feels uncomfortable about stepping out onto an empty dancefloor in front of one’s peers.

Whatever the cause (apathy? shyness? not wanting to be the first? the impracticality of an impossibly complex outfit?) the greatest dilemma for DJs at certain times once involved what to do with all that fantastic and new-but-as-yet-unheard music.

It was the age-old dilemma: play it safe and familiar, and risk condemnation for nauseating repetition or try something new and unprecedented, and risk emptying the dancefloor like draining bathwater (I personally witnessed this to spectacular effect when I thought I was being all progressive-like when I was the first to drop the Apoptygma Berserk version of Cambodia… they practically ran off the dancefloor).

It was the well-known spectre of keeping all the people happy some of the time, and some of the people happy all the time, but never all the people all the time.

Yet one evening the truly fantastical happened when an entire club got up to dance — to one track. It was Skinny Puppy (or rather, a Skinny Puppy cover) and for one fleeting, glorious moment, the whole damn club became everything that people who don’t go to clubs imagined it to be.

I might add that this was at a venue that was, in every sense of the word, underground. This was the Bunker Lounge, a windowless, single-room, shoebox-shaped subterranean cavity on Swanston Street. Entering first necessitated descending down stairs, whereupon one emerged into the secret space below. Seriously, industrial AF!

While a well-known track traditionally incites a portion of the room to stop what they’re doing and hopefully get up and move, at this precise moment there was something about the crowd, the vibe, the timing and whatever else that, quite simply, balanced out for there to something in it for everyone in the room.

Worth getting for the Skinny Puppy cover of Assimilated.

The track that made it happen was a Skinny Puppy cover — Assimilate by Malaise. In the chronological sense it was not new, being several years old at the time. It was, however, new in that it was uncommon to hear it get played.

Within moments of it kicking off, not one person remained seated as the whole room was up and jumping. In popular vanilla culture, when those CSI and NCIS agents investigate a crime from the seedy underground and they enter one of those dangerous alternative places, the mandatory scene that greets them is something out of Dante’s fetish party. Of course everyone is dancing, gyrating, leering viciously. And to totally emphasise just how sinister the whole shindig is, the music is usually some vanilla interpretation of whatever the TV producer felt would be a good match for non-conformist music (sometimes it’s even Marilyn Manson, assuming the studio could afford the licencing).

Industrial EBM goth-type club-goers know that the above scene is rarely a thing. But for one glorious moment, it was. Nor was a Triple J ‘alternative’ selection or cheesy ’80s pop track. It was Skinny Puppy (sort of).

And the rivet heads shed a silent tear.
                 

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