Here’s the first news from this month’s NRGetic Romancer, and well worth waiting for - DJ Yousuke’s solo set. This could his best set for a while, and the first few tracks are just fantastic, building up a brilliant atmosphere. I haven’t got a tracklist handy, but it’s mostly UK-styled freeform, and even if you’re not into that sort of thing I urge you to give it a listen, it really is good stuff.
Not long at all now until Guld’s second appearance in Finland, and he’s recently posted up the excellent flyer design for the event at Helsinki’s Sade (I don’t know how to type the ’special a’, sorry). Playing alongside Proteus, Neon, Friik, Inch b2b with Triton, and Tritium, not to mention Kuroshio Current, it looks like a great event in the making. Those of you in Finland, make sure to take lots of photos/video for us back here in Tokyo.
The flyer for December’s NRGetic Romancer is all ready, and it’s yet another great one for the collection. As we’ve already mentioned, Android Lime is the ‘NRG Friendship DJ’ for this event, joining all the regulars for the last Romancer of the year.
Speaking of flyers - work is underway on the effort for next month’s Hell’s Gate, and it should be well worth waiting for. Coming soon…
Electronica Exposed definitely doesn’t do things by half measures. As well as the long-awaited release of Full Circle Recording’s Big Kisses and Darkness, we have the sixth and final release in the Kreatrix series, a wide selection of interesting looking tunes in Plundered Vaults, UK freeform in Electromagnetic: The Complete Works, and finally volumes 3 and 4 of Electronic: The Complete Works. That’s an almost unbelievable list, and just shows what we’re going to miss when EE finally shuts up shop. There are too many great tunes to list in their entirety, but check out the Electronica Exposed site for enough tracklists to sink a very big ship.
Incidentally, Big Kisses and Darkness’ release means that DJ Yousuke and Buzzmasta’s awesome Spiral Life (plus the Invader remix) has finally seen daylight - it’s definitely up there with Halcyon as one of my favourite Full Circle tunes.
There will hopefully be some material from the last NRGetic Romancer to post up before too long (where have I heard that before), and it seems like there were actually a lot of new tracks played, not only from Betwixt & Between.
Anyway, I wasn’t sure when this was going to be official news, but Guld has just announced that South Africa’s Android Lime will be playing at the last NRGetic Romancer of 2008. Given Android’s mixing style, it continues the same line of hard NRG guest DJs from Proteus to Lab 4, and also Adam/DJ X’s solo appearances. He’s sure to go down well with the NRGetic Romancer crowd, who are very familar with that kind of dark and hard mixing (we have Guld playing every time, after all), and so it should be a great event alongside the regular DJs.
A new batch of releases are just out from Hybridize, including a pre-release two-track CD from Nightforce (and Substanced). Featuring the absolutely fantastic Raindrops and the pacy hardcore Do You Love, this is really a must-listen. A few other tracks are now available via the FINRG shop and Trackitdown, including Sam One’s The Future, Substanced’s Geneva and the Swoosh vs Carbon Based remix of DJ Air’s Alone With Me. All great tunes, and highly recommended.
It’s been a good week - I’ve just joined the new FINRG sublabel, Hybridize, as a ‘Hybridize DJ’! Joining the other new recruits, producer/DJs ROB.O.T.T and Nightforce, I’ll be doing my best to push the new Finnish sound in this corner of the world (while pushing the Japanese sound back in the other direction). It’s really an honour to be connected with artists/DJs as great as Epyx & Cyrez, Nomic, Swoosh, Substanced, Sam One, Horzi…the list goes on. I’m starting to think about next month’s Hell’s Gate now, but after that I’ll be sure to bang out a few new mixes ASAP to celebrate.
I’ve had to miss my first NRGetic Romancer for a long time - I actually had a job interview this morning, and thought it might be pushing things to go to NRGetic Romancer last night, and then be suited up and heading for an interview at 11 the next morning… I’ll do my best to get the news on what happened in my absence, though (I already know that Betwixt played some new tunes).
Anyway, I bought a couple of copies of The Japan Times this afternoon, and the Hell’s article has a prime spot in the Time Out entertainment/reportage section, complete with a photo of Zio (and a slightly weary-looking me). It’s been posted up on the JT website too - complete with the photos that you will have mostly seen before - check it out here. By the way, when I’m talking about ‘the kick anchoring the track etc etc’ in the article, I was actually trying to explain hardstyle, not hard dance as a whole - just in case you’re wondering… I tried to shoehorn in some comments about the Finnish scene too, and they just about made into print, plus a reference to Alek Szahala.
Hard to believe, but Sunday’s edition (19th October) of national newspaper The Japan Times will carry a small feature on last month’s Hell’s Gate! One of the JT’s esteemed writers was at the event, and had a few words with me, Zio and some other ravers while taking in a few of the DJ sets (take-de-x, Zio’s hardstyle, mine and Stanfield’s). Aside from an article or two about Guld in Loudmagazine, the scene is much too small to have been picked up on by any other media, and so this sort of publicity really is great news for Hell’s. I’m guessing that the article might appear online too - I’ll make sure to post up any links, if so.
You might also remember me mentioning some upcoming photos from the last event? Well, here they are, a couple of which might even be used in the upcoming article. All credit goes to Our Man Hickey.
[above] Cogi, PlasmaDancer, Guld. / Me again - mid-set this time.
In case you’re not convinced yet by all the recent THC happenings, here’s a must-see preview/summary video of the event. It runs through all the major DJs, and has some great footage in particular of Lunch, Kanon and Betwixt & Between (minus his mask, as this isn’t NRGetic Romancer). Great decor at this event too, it must be said.
There will hopefully be some material from the last NRGetic Romancer to post up before too long (where have I heard that before), and it seems like there were actually a lot of new tracks played, not only from Betwixt & Between.
