Some time ago I 'poked' Bassnectar via my blog about him being very American-centric and that he totally neglects his fans in other parts of the world (I overexaggarated, as usual). A few months passed and he landed in Europe on a 7-gig tour :)) After something like 6 years since his latest visit here. Unfortunately, I was/will not able to make it to any of his performances, which sucks totally !!! I feel pretty shitty about this :(
At least, I was able to send my special 'party reporter' to Crawdaddy in Dublin. Montek, my younger brother who lives in the beautiful capital of Ireland is another well-known bass-lover in my family, upcoming producer and IT guru. I did not need to convince him at all that he should be there on Friday. Below is his report from an 'osom night with Bassnectar, including a few heaaaaaaaaaavy videos. Enjoy!
Welcome bass lovers & everybody who is ready to get some nasty bass bin!
We have Bassnectar's show at Dublin's Crawdaddy on the bill. Simply put, it was totally awesome! Night was really special, even legen... wait for it... dary! One of the reasons is that it actually happened here, just one of only 7 European gigs of his 2010 Euro Trip. Secondly, this took place in Crawdaddy which always, not knowing why, delivers proper vibe. It might be due to the fact that my first dubstep nights happened there with infamous mystik, digital UK brothers or maybe it is the way bass propagates in the premises, which by the way isn't the best sound system out there, still easily enough to shake yer troubles away & keep you warm inside.
When I got there around 12pm, half an hour before the scheduled set time, the queue was still long, thou event was worth waiting. While standing there and getting ready for the action, LCD Soundsystem crew passed me (didn't catch them with my conscious as they are so Irish looking, James Murphy, right? It was the next day, while checking what's up in the city, I've spotted them having show in the next-door's "Tripod"). Back to the story, at the end of the queue was a really nice surprise in a shape of my name on the list. Thanks Krank! More digits in the wallet for alcopops.
To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Bassnectar's productions. Surely, he possess great technical skills, still I have a feeling he's afraid to get into it a bit, placing prolificness before experiment. As a result his tunes are solid, but a bit predictable. What I'm trying to say is he feels comfortable with one idea and builds every new production on it. That's really in opposition with UK scene, which is morphing, mutating, stripping genres and reorders them in a search of that mandatory uniqueness. The reason I'm bringing all that is the fear I had before his live set. Fear of monotony and missed experimental potential, which is a basic requirement in the field of electronic music perception.
None of my fears materialized! Bassnectar gave a solid, well thought-through, yet not static performance, perfectly balancing breaks, accumulations and repetitions, not too much not too less, that's the skills I was mentioning before. Sound scope was amazing as well, cowboy laser slashes, hip-hop dirty vocals, jah interludes, well-known sirens, dubby low, low basses and finally perfectly synced wobbles. Yes, Lorin, we're feeling it, as he might have asked a few times about it. Didn't you see that guy spilling his beer, in a very snazzy way, all over full dancefloor, with your first bass hit? That was really spectacular I must say. Trip was amazing, that's the type of producers and personalities, you'd like to follow. Dude was smiling, jumping, waving and finally pretending to be a wobble bass, so much appreciated for live musicians. One thing I'm not sure about is his setup. Was it only Ableton with two channels ported to mixer (which is by the way so simple yet effective solution) & sorted list of tunes or was it something more sophisticated (giving an option to pick up a tune with the crowd flow). I hope it was something more, what would explain his frequent headphone cueing.
The only downside of it all, was my increasing boredom, due to no quids, a possible road trip next day and kind of Lorin's transition back to the way he started. I figured nothing new is going to happen (was I right?), so I retreated and headed back to the lair. Night was complete, giving me at least a month of comfort over daily routines. Plus, man! It's a nice start to the weekend. Now, I'm chillin, which I wish you a lot.
Big Up Subz! Montek.
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