|
Programme
Manager's Highlights March 2010
>> On
March 5 Secousse continued its musical rampage
across the globe to bring you the world's biggest tropical and electro
ghettobass night as Radioclit and the Secousse
Sound System were let loose thereafter for more joyous,
bass-driven and downright dirty tropical beats (watch out: those
air-horns are set to stun!)
Secousse
will be back again on Friday April 2 (it’s not called Good
Friday for nothing!) but there’s another chance to catch Radioclit’s
Etienne Tron De Bouchony this month, as he is launching
Secousse Paris on March 25. It’s at the Institut
de Bonté, 75 rue des Martyrs, in the 18th arrondissement,
near the Pigalle Metro. Find out more at their Facebook
page here
Don’t
forget that you can stream Radio Secousse around
the clock at http://secousse.org
and you can still download the Radioclit/The Very Best album
here
|
|
Secousse
Sound System
>>
Secousse Fri 5 March and Fri 2 April //
7pm-2am // free before 8pm, £6 before 11pm and £8 after
>>
See our exclusive interview with Radioclit
here |
|
|
|
|


geisha dancers at Disco Geisha
>>
Disco Geisha // Sunday 21 March. 4pm-1am, £5 before 8pm, £7
after (free before 6pm)
>>
decks: Tomoki Tamura, Eightbitrate, Naoki
Shimizu and SUPERMETHOD (deep disco)// live: VERSUS n°1 + Common
Deflection Problems + Dobly
|
|
>>
Like all the best Sunday sessions, Disco Geisha
attracts a cosmopolitan mix of British, Japanese and continental
house connoisseurs for a mix which club host and DJ/producer Tomoki
Tamura is ‘not too deep, nor too hard or banging.'
That
already sets it apart from many of the bangin’ house and
techno-driven Sunday night parties scurrying around east London,
but what those other Sunday clubs definitely don't have is some
special Japanese food, great geisha art on the walls and a truly
diverse musical mix earlier on which features three live bands.
This
house party is different. We have ‘everything you need for
a Sunday afternoon-evening session,’ says Tomoki.
‘You can get early there for free entry with special happy-hour
drinks and nice disco-jazzy vibes earlier on.’
Don’t think that Tomoki has gone soft though:
he and DJs Eightbitrate, Naoki Shimizu and Supermethod
sure know how to jack a house crowd. In February Tomoki
celebrated the third birthday of his other club night, Holic,
at C.A.M.P. near Old Street and in March he’ll be playing
at Plastic People with Lost (March 13) and Hi-Tek Soul at the
Ministry of Sound (March 27), as well as Disco Geisha.
On
March 21 the UK-based Japanese band Dobly return
to Disco Geisha to immerse you in the ‘soothing-yet-thrilling
Dobly world’ with their multi-vocal lyricism and neo shoe-gazing
sound, and they’re followed by two Italian bands who have
been booked by Eightbitrate. ‘He’s Italian himself
and he’s been DJing for two years at Disco Geisha, so I
trust him,’ grins Tomoki.
Common
Deflection Problems are east London-based Italians, Antonio,
Gianpiero and Mario, whose mixed musical backgrounds mean that
CDP's sound has been influenced by grunge, stoner, indie, math
and punk rock, and there's some jazz and prog vibes in there too!
While Versus
n°1, aka Dagon Lorai & Walton Zed, are two
very distinctive, attractive and theatrical performers who are
said to fight each other ‘armed with guitars, trumpets,
phonograph, poetry, painting, noises and screams...’
Didn’t I say it was anything but a typical house night?
|
| |
|
|
| >>
‘I
can let you in on a secret: he’s human after all!’ a
lovely girl told me at the Communion
night on February 7. Robert Pattinson, heart-throb
star of the movie vampire movie Twilight (you must
have heard about it?), had come along to the night to see ‘a
mate’s band’ and I’m told that the mood in the
ladies’ loos was all a-flutter, with the gossip all about
him. It was ever-so-slightly noticeable that when he moved around
the club he was trailed by a train of women, but the girl I spoke
to wasn’t overly impressed. ‘He wouldn’t let me
take a photo with him,’ she sniffed, adding ‘that was
a pity, as I might have got some money from Heat magazine.’
Communion
was back on February 28 for a special one-off party to launch their
new compilation. It was really packed, which is hardly surprising
given the all-star nu-folk line-up for what is an equally special
double-album.
In
a four-star review of the night in The
Independent Tim Walker wrote ‘You’d expect
the capital’s most fertile ground for new musical acts to
be somewhere hip like Camden in the north or Dalston in the east.
But right now it’s the comfortable south-western enclaves
of Barnes, Wimbledon and Fulham that seem to be producing the goods.
Thus the first Sunday evening of every month sees dedicated followers
of the district’s folk scene descend the stairs into the Notting
Hill Arts Club for Communion…’
Communion
returns once gain on March 7 (and April 4) for events showcasing
a typically wide range of rock, indie, alternative, folk and acoustic
performers. Which reminds me of what Kevin Jones
said in his interview on this very site: ‘We like to really
jam-pack the line-ups, we don’t want to put just a couple
of bands on per night, we want to give people value for money so
if you are paying a fiver to see six or seven amazing bands that’s
pretty good.’
‘Pretty
good’ is an understatement. No wonder that Communion
have used the model of their night here at the Arts Club to expand
to co-host Communion events in Brighton and Leeds
and even Sydney too. On Sunday March 14 there’s a new Communion
opening at Mr Wolfs in Bristol and two weeks later it launches in
Dublin too. Find
out more here.
Golly, are there more opening up after that? ‘Oh, no,’
said club host Kevin Jones. ‘After that we’ll need a
rest.’
|
|


Vadoinmessico
>>
Communion // Sun March 7 (April 4, every
1st Sunday of the month) // 6pm - 1am,
£7 // live:
Look, Stranger! + Bloody Nose + Vadoinmessico
+ Lulu and the Lampshades + Alexander Wolfe + Lail Arad // decks:
Chess Club, DJ Jam,
DJ Big Mac
>>
See our exclusive interview with Kevin
Jones here
|
|
|
|
| >>
yOyO // March 18, 7pm-2am; £5 before
11pm, £7 after //advance
sales only, no tickets on the door // Please bring ID!
>>
with:
Kasha and No Fixed Abode play live // Guest DJ Sam Ronson |
|
>>
Mark Ronson is a longtime friend of yOyO
and we’ve been lucky enough to have him play at
the club many times over the years… Seems like that Ronson
family magic is shared by his sister Sam, as
the last time she played for us the queues stretched down the
block and the dancefloor was packed till 2am.
Get
your guest list request in early for March 18 (when Kasha
and No Fix’d Abode are playing live too)
and see what all the hype is about… Entry
is guest list only: there are no tickets on the door. Enquire
for guest list via myspace.com/yoyouk
or the yoyo Facebook page. Please bring ID!
|
|
>>
Many
DJs, despite their (sometime) reputation as leaders of underground
youth culture, are actually fairly conservative. They’re known
for a particular style of dance music and that’s what they
deliver, often claiming that this is because the crowd will leave
the ‘floor if they veer too off-message. Gringo Da
Parada is not like that. The Favela Chic main
man who hosts the monthly mash-up that is Disorder and Progress
loves music too much to be hemmed in by genre barriers.
Monsieur Da Parada successfully mixes samba, funk,
reggae, jazz, punk, electro, drum ‘n’ bass, fox-trot,
mambo, opera, techno and more into a monthly musical merry-go-round
which is like a truly diverse iPod selection played on Shuffle.
Anybody can throw on a load of different records, but it takes a
special DJ to make them make sense together, or to juxtapose them
with such contrast that the crowd go “Wow! Here we go; something
completely different!”
That
is how it has worked up to now, but on 27 March D &
P gets more disorderly and progressive with an injection
of Mucho Mucho, the DJ partnership of Gringo
Da Parada and Tchiky Al Dente.
'It'll be more eclectic and even more crazy,' promises Gringo, laughing,
'a bit like the stupid guys on MTV, Beavis and Butthead, playing
tricks all the time, living life on super vitamins...'
Tchiky Al Dente also revels in mixing it up, inspired
by his own Franco-Brazilian background and a musical career in which
he has been a top international house DJ, Europe's leading baile
funk producer, a leading remixer (from Gotan Project to Les Negresses
Vertes) and ardent fan of drum 'n' bass as much as Brazilian beats.
The Musical Director of Favela Chic Paris has DJed
at the Love Parade in Paris and Berlin and hosts the Clek Clek Boom
parties and the thriving website and blog www.clekclekboom.com,
which is where we found his biography which states gleefully: 'his
sets are eclectic and he won't hesitate to mix the improbable.'
So, apart from noting that there will probably be more dirty dance
music (baile funk, B-more, techno-trippin' hip hop?) all we can
say is expect the unexpected.
You've
heard that line before, but this is no idle boast, as Disorder
and Progress makes the improbable possible; it proves that
chaos theory can be successfully applied to nightlife. And it makes
you dance like a loco... |
|

Mucho Mucho
Gringo
Da Parada
>>Disorder
and Progress presents Mucho Mucho
>>
Saturday 27 March // 7pm-2am; free before 8pm // £6 before
11pm, £8 after
|
| |
|
|
|