The Wednesday 1st of June 2005 Eclectro Lounge was not such a catastrophe as the 18th of May, the lowest point of our club, had been. Apadana was not exactly jammed, but not the graveyard of two weeks ago, either. I still think, though, that we don't have much chances of survival unless Apadana will give us a weekend night. People don't go out in the middle of week in provincial small towns (face it, even though some deluded minds are prone to claim this is some big city) like Tampere.
Well, I don't know if I will ever get relaxed having these clubs: they seem always to be a source of enormous personal tension and nervousness for me, with all the worries that go with promotion, advertising and the night itself. Will there be enough people, will they be satisfied with the music, will they leave home happy or unhappy; will some drunkard bust my balls because of the music I play or don't play, or because of my mixing skills (that is, lack thereof), can I keep it only cool if those situations come along, and so on and so on. Anyway, I'm of the personality type for whom it's easier to communicate through music than as myself, so these sort of social situations always keep me on my toes. I just do what I can, but please don't be too disappointed with me if I don't turn out to be the exact fulfillment of your expectations. Often I feel like a solitary fighter behind the lines than some suave diplomat courting both the low and meek, high and mighty, sweet-talking everyone. I believe more in actions than words, which can deceive (and with many people, they will).
Anyway, that night I did my usual thing, I suppose (check the playlist). And hello to Tuuli and Monica!
Mike Not played a set of nu beat, which is obviously getting fashionable again, with the madcap UK label V/VM having a night in London dedicated entirely to this style which was briefly popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nu Beat (also: New Beat, Nu-Beat) which originated in Belgium was stylistically low-tempo techno, sound-wise not that far from EBM (electronic body music) of the acts like Front 242; A Split Second probably the best-known act of the Nu Beat genre. People like Terence Fixmer have been championing this style lately.
Some people thought Mika's set was a bit too rough, and might have suited better for some industrial/goth type of night, but personally, I'm all for variation. Again, this leads into the ever-interesting debate: what is "electro" actually, and how you define it? Because the music what industrial goths call electro seems not to be exactly the same thing electro is for us fans who have grown up with Afrika Bambaataa, Underground Resistance, Aux 88, I-f, and so on. To have some crude sort of definition, in the former case it's white, whereas in the latter it's BLACK. In the end, though, "If it kick, it kick, period", as my fellow countryman Tomi "Tomba" Koskinen once legendarily put it. And the rest is just bullshit and splitting hairs.
The playlist here.
And here is the poster for Eclectro Lounge #13 (click it to make it larger if it looks messy on your screen) in two weeks (Wednesday 15 June '05), when we will have as guest DJs Paul Cooper, Slave To The Beat, Matias and Sakke.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
No comments:
Post a Comment