So played

I’m gonna get the bitchy, complaining part of this out of the way right off the bat. Last Saturday night, I ventured merrily out with a couple pals to try to hunt down a few funky grooves to twiddle my toes to. We decided to hit the SAT for the Fool’s Gold showcase, figuring we’d have our fill of sweet, impeccably mixed jams. When we arrived at 1:15 a.m., foul omens immediately began emanating from behind the bar and crowded DJ booth. The LCD projections were set to desktop, the bar staff were asleep and the music was skipping in a manner that reminisced a dirty CD player more than a psychedelic glitch track. Whatever, I told myself. I’ve seen all manner of blips in event production, and took these facts as a simple moment—well, 20 minutes—of hiccupping. I’m pretty forgiving about that sort of stuff.

The opener’s set—I couldn’t tell if it was Aoki or Sinden because there were 10 cronies behind the tables and I was at the back—presently closed to the sound of an atrociously trainwrecked edit of “One More Time” by Daft Punk, triply offensive due to the marring of such a wonderful tune, the use of a track that’s been overplayed for close to a decade, and the fact that you don’t rock fuckin’ Discovery unless you’ve just slain the dancefloor, which was most definitely not the case. So I was quite relieved as the lighting guy woke up and reset the projectors, A-Trak came on, and my beer finally arrived. Sweet. Time to get freaky on the floorboards. Au contraire, cher optimiste. So A-Trak managed to fart upon not one but two more Thomas Bangalter tracks within 20 minutes of coming on, hamfistedly cramming “Robot Rock” and “Music Sounds Better With You” into my reluctant ears with no heed for the build or construction of the tracks, spraying them out like 2manyDJs on six Valiums—all the pretense but none of the style, tossing the progressive composition of the songs to the wind like an amateur. This from a guy who’s arguably one of the most accomplished DJs in the whole damn shop.

Search me, but he kept further ruining already played-out tracks, with the few intact moments discombobulated by far, far, far too much non-musical chatter on the microphone, until we fled the scene at 2:15 a.m., laughing the laugh of the perplexingly, comically disappointed. One hour of trying and I didn’t even get to bust out my goddamn mash potato. Don’t get me wrong, I could find far worse events to rag on, but that’s a scene I generally quite enjoy and it seemed to be spiraling that night, so take it in that context.

Phew! It’s nice to vent. The good news is that this spring is gonna destroy, and the MUTEK line-up is out. Look forward to names like Knifehandchop, Radio Slave, Tim Hecker, the Field, Modeselektor and Carl Craig at the end of May, while you’ll have a chance to see Erol Alkan at Coda, Foals and Sebastien Grainger at Cabaret, and the unbelievably dope Midnight Juggernauts along with Shy Child at les Saints, all in May’s first week. Para One, Surkin and Orgasmic are scheduled for April 24 at Coda, and Jordan Dare’s Voyeur party starts back up at Cabaret on April 26.

I LOVE YOU GUYS, BUT SERIOUSLY…jack.oatmon@gmail.com