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Tuesday 5 January 2016

A Vast Improvement

I don’t really get nervous before DJing but I did have two small butterflies before my last set.

Firstly I had put pressure on myself to improve from the last diabolical set.  Secondly I realised that it was that special Friday of doom – the one where it is full of absolute tossers behaving like absolute tossers.

I have practiced more in recent months prior to DJing – living in Bracknell means I do occasionally still have the energy in the evening after work to get behind the decks for an hour or two.  Normally with a glass of wine.  This month I practiced more than prior to any other DJ set – probably a good 10 hours.  It might not sound a lot but it has helped.

I had just 2 CDs worth of new tracks that I really wanted to play – a lot of bass-heavy but fairly minimal stuff.  And I also knew my previously-burnt CDs somewhat more.

We got down to the Turtle quite early and I ended up sticking the music on around 930pm, I was just going to have a beer first but they had some absolute gash over the speakers that I simply had to disembowel.

I’m loving the hypnotic grooves from Romania at the moment, so I started on those lines.  When there are few people there, I can do what I like – I don’t need to worry about having a beat for people to dance to, or a bassline for them to feel.  I can simply play 15 minute long minimal tracks whilst I find my groove.

There was one quick panic about one of the decks not working – until we realised the cross-fader was on.  Ooops.  And I did royally fuck up one mix – but one in 2.5 hours is pretty good going in my view.  I don’t always get enough time to cue up tracks perfectly as I’m there to have a good time and talk to my friends too.

I slowly progressed matters such as with this beauty from Roustam:


As the crowd built, slower than usual, I turned up the bass levels and turned up the darkness, including this new monster from Loco Dice:


I realised that I was sending things a bit too dark – I like to test people but it needed some light too.  I tended towards house music to finish – and I finished far too soon for my liking which is a sign that I am enjoying myself.  I could have quite happily carried on.

I did later on start hanging around the decks on the off-chance that Martin was bored of DJing…yeah like a DJ would just voluntarily give up some of their set.  Doh.  I just wanted to play some house music!

Bizarrely it was probably the quietest night we’ve had since the summer.  Which thinking about it makes sense – a lot of our audience are students and foreigners – many of which would have left for Christmas holidays or been about to.  On the plus side, there was a good splattering of amigos, plus some of the regulars who turn up every month.

Next up is my birthday set which I hope that you can all attend.  And my good friend Samantha’s birthday set too.

A bit of an odd one this as I’m playing the first hour, and the last hour.


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