* Fri 4 April: Peacebeats @ Minke
* Sat 5 April: Nubreed @ Black Cat White Cat * Sat 5 Apr: Kinetic
feat. Bryan G, Suv & Stamina MC @ St Paul's * Mon 7 April:
Dance Music Awards @ Norwood Football Club * Fri 11 April: Adelaide
Massive Launch Party @ Traffic * Sat 12 April: Kid Kenobi @ Traffic
* Sat 12 April: Octave One @ Minke * Sat 12 April: Off The Couch
* Fri 18 April: Twice as Nice @ Heaven * Sun 20 April: Utopia
@ Traffic * Thurs 24 April: Mad Racket @ Minke * Sat 26 April:
DJ Craze * Sat 10 May: Turbine feat Skynet @ Traffic * Tues 13
May: DJ Krush @ Minke * Sat 17 May: Tom Clark @ Minke * Sat 7
June: Frantic Party feat Andy Farley * Sat 5 July: Enchanted Forest:
Winter Edition
Last reminder that Peacebeats
is on this Fri 4 April at Minke. I can’t think of a more timely
charity event with all proceeds going to NOWAR SA, Justice for
Refugees SA, The Paper, Urban Ecology Australia and more - and
even if you don’t have a charitable bone in your body, go for
the fantastic lineup that includes Brendon, Odyssey,
Mr S, DJ Josh, Mal Kia, Vegas, DJ
Bold, Jorge Watts, MPK, Noddy, John
Doe, Stephen King, Kim Dezen, Fiction,
Mark 7, Filter, Patch, Jayar, Pab
& Griff. Looks like a fantastic night for an even better
cause. Read the interview with event organiser and drum &
bass DJ, Jayar in this issue.
All reports are that Paul Van
Dyk played a blinder of a set last Thursday at Traffic. After
early sound problems, a capacity crowd witnessed one of Adelaide’s
best trance sets on record. And that's not all - dB's Heath
Roberston was waiting patiently for Van Dyk to finish his
set so Van Dyk could sign his copy of for An Angel, when
the 12” was snatched from him. Was he robbed? No, it was actually
Van Dyk who had forgotten his copy of the track and wanted to
use it as his finale!
Congrats to Minke who once again
delivered the goods, bringing one of the worlds best hip hop acts,
Mr Lif, to Adelaide last week. And Minke was repayed by
the punters with a sellout show. It’s been reported that the demand
was so great that the originally $20 tickets were getting scalped
for up to $80. If you’re one of those who missed out, here’s advanced
noticed for Minke’s next hip hop extravaganza featuring DJ
Krush on Tues 13 May. I don’t know much about hip hop, but
the fact that three different dB writers were willing to kill
each other to get this interview probably means that he’s something
very special! Check out the interview with one of the worlds most
respected names in hip hop in the next couple of issues of dB.
Dance music around Easter has
become synonymous with Twice As Nice at Heaven. This time round
they bring you two of the biggest names in dance music, Darude
and Kosheen on Fri 18 Apr along with the usually huge lineup
over a number of arenas. Kosheen will be represented by their
drum & bass maestros Decoder and Substance who
are responsible for many of the less commercial mixes of Kosheen’s
tracks you’ll hear on their singles. Check out the interview with
Decoder in an upcoming issue of dB.
Due to the hard work of a number
of Adelaide promoters, Adelaide is going through a drum &
bass renaissance at the moment. Way too many events to mention
singularly are coming up but here are a few key ones: Adelaide’s
most popular drum & bass site, Adelaide Massive, is celebrating
the birthday of their forums and their new name with a rather
large show at Traffic on Fri 11 April, featuring a long list of
forum regulars which include Adelaide’s best d&b DJs as well
as a very special live performance by Hooligan Soul featuring
Lexy.
Not strictly a drum & bass
gig, but Suv (UK) and Stamina (UK) are coming to
town on Sat 5 April. They’ll be joined by Bryan G (UK),
Darrison (UK), Paul King (UK), Spellbound
(Can) and Rapid (Vic) as well as locals over three areas
of St Pauls.
One of Adelaide’s newest promotion
teams kicked off a couple of months back with the first 'Turbine'
show at Traffic. Its huge success meant that another was always
on the cards and this time they’re bringing more heavy artillery
in the guise of Skynet from the UK. Better known as a producer,
he surprised the pants off a lot of people with awesome mixing
at his last Adelaide gig. It all goes down at Traffic on Sat 10
May.
With all this drum & bass
around it’s easy to forget that Adelaide has a huge following
for harder styles as well, but a weekly night set to remind us
is Evolution at Black Cat White Cat every Friday. It features
the sounds of hard house, hard trance , hardcore and freeform
in arguably Adelaides best medium sized club with free entry.
Residents are Submission, Torque, RPM, Sidetrak
and Poizon.
On the subject of Black Cat White
Cat, if you have the vaguest interest in live dance music a gig
not to be missed is Nubreed on Sat 5 April where you can
get a sneak preview of tracks from their new album. Not only known
as one of the best live Australian acts, they were recently honoured
overseas by being nominated for Best New Act at this year’s Breaks
Poll Awards in London, the premier organisation setup to recognise
the high achievers in all things relating to breaks. In Australia,
NuBreed have hit the Top 10 on the ARIA club chart with their
remix of the new Hamish single Forever & Never.
And while we’re talking about
breakbeat, just a reminder that Australia’s most popular breaks
DJ, Kid Kenobi, is going to be at Traffic on Sat 12 April,
and World DMC Champion DJ Craze is in Adelaide on Sat 26
April.
Mad Racket has become an annual
event at Minke, and is set to continue on Anzac Day Eve (Thurs
24 April). Set over three levels, the 4 Mad Racketeers from Sydney
- Ken Cloud, Simon Caldwell, Jimmi James
and Zootie will be Making a night of it with the usual
suspects. One for all and all for Minke!
Another event to put in your diary
at Minke is Berlin’s Tom Clark who will be bringing his
trademark house sound on Sat 17 May in Skylab. So what kinda house
does he do? Tek house, deep house, micro house, villas, cabins,
playboy mansionsÉyou name it and I’m sure Tom Clark has a house
for you! He’s a long serving resident of Germanys leading club
Tresor (where Paul Van Dyk first made his name).
So what’s not at Minke? Kylie
Mansfield! Some of you may remember her as that smiling beautiful
face that greeted you when you stepped inside Minke. Others of
you may remember her as ‘that girl who never gets her press releases
in on time!’ (or that might just be me). Either way, she’s bringing
her loads of dance music industry experience and oodles of talent
to Juice Records. In a couple of weeks the website will be up
and running and I’ll pass on details when that happens.
I've been hearing a lot of interest
from the Adelaide techno crew about Hardware 20 so I thought
I'd write up a few details. If you're in the mood for the finest
of techno and trance from the crew who know techno like no other
in Australia you gotta check out Hardware 20 on Thurs 17 April
(the Easter Long Weekend). The venue is the Grand Sports and Leisure
Centre, Altona and international DJs include Anthony Rother,
Pascal F.E.O.S., Stanny Franssen, Nick
Lunn and Paul King. I'm particularly excited about
Rother whose live techno/electro set promises to be awesome!
Looking at some international
news, James Holden announced that he is launching his own
label named ‘Border Community’. After a well-publicised split
with his previous label, Silver Planet, with the continual delays
in releasing Holden’s tracks seemingly the main reason for the
split, his vision for the new label is danceable, leftfield electronic
music.
The Dancestar awards, self-proclaimed
as the ‘World’s largest dance music awards show’ recently took
place in the USA. The major winner was Dirty Vegas, whose
hit Days Go By took out three awards. Other big winners
included Moby (best act) Paul Oakenfold (best album)
and DJ Tiesto (best international DJ)
