F Y O F

MSTRKRFT used to be cool because they both had beards.

Too bad they shaved them off. Now they’re just like every other DJ act.

I started off my night at Glasslands for the Piece of Pizza party, whose dress code read “Technicolor explosion” or something along those lines. The flyer included one super-important line: DANCING NINJA TURTLES. I saw none. Color me disappointed. We heard the usual jams like that AC/DC Thunderstruck remix and a couple other decent tracks laid down by Dirtyfinger and decided to ditch their piss-poor bar selection (who wants to drink beer or sangria at a dance party?) for Studio B.

We managed to scam a ride from some dude whose back seat was infested with tennis gear and pulled up next to the 200+ person line outside the venue, which was sporting more muscle out front than I’ve ever seen. For once I had the foresight to buy tickets so we skipped all the bullshit and jumped inside, where the place was fucking PACKED. I mean… we were there in October when they played and sold out the place, but this was insane. Dance floor entirely full (estimated 400-500 people minimum) and the bar/lounge areas were also SRO.

Bloody Beatroots were just finishing their set when we arrived (around 1:00) and we were treated to the monotony that is LA Riots…. which we were hoping to skip by arriving late. Having seen them (aka one of the two) play at Le Royale, it wasn’t a surprise that the dude played generic hard electro for close to an hour. The crowd was into it but I only found myself dancing to two songs, including that new Hot Chip collab with Villains kids are going crazy for.

After taking a few swigs out of a bottle of Jack, homeboy left the stage and MSTRKRFT came on and rocked the shit out of the party. By the time they played their first track, the Fire Department deemed the show over capacity and wasn’t even letting ticketed people back in. We rocked the fuck out to their first few tracks at a mild fervor until that new track that Jared and I can’t stop jizzing over came on and made the party go fucking INSANE! Yeah, you haven’t heard VuVuVu? Get with the fucking game, kids. Shit’s been on Youtube for months!

Other notable tracks were AC Slater - Ban Ger (which judging by his text response wasn’t all that unusual) and MSTRKRFT’s own Easy Love. About fifteen minutes in, I had to take a call and meet up with some kids, but I’m pretty sure that the crowd was cleared by the fire department shortly after. It was a quick night, but totally worth the $15 ticket.The thing that really got me at this show was how two technically adept DJ’s offered totally different vibes with the crowd based solely on track selection and timing. LA Riots were all about huge ‘epic’ builds and lots of heavy tracks that all had the same bassline and sounded the same. This mostly led to people dancing in place with each other, raising their hands a few times for the builds, and chilling during the bass drops. Overall, a fairly normal dancing experience. However, when MSTRKRFT came on, the tone changed IMMEDIATELY. I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that they were more recognizable, because not gonna lie it was kinda hard to see them up on stage at first. The tunes, the bassline, the style of rarely dropping the bass unless you HAVE to, all added up to an amazing dance experience that had people smiling, jumping up and down, and facing the DJ’s rather than each other.

MSTRKRFT - VuVuVu (Live from Parklife) (MP3)

Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor (LA Riots vs Villains) (MP3)

Posted on March 8th, 2008 by Bradley D
Filed under: 2000's, AC Slater, LA Riots, MSTRKRFT, Studio B