triphop, old-school goth-rock, IDM, noise, power-tronics, etc....

[Vort3xxX]

Hello Brian,

At most venues the upstage's size and up, I prefer to play 1 hour or
so of downtempo stuff at the beginning of the night & then Blast off
from there.   I think it would betray the dance club atmosphere to do
anything else.  If people want to turn a bouncing dance club into a
lounge room via atmospheric music, perhaps what they wanted to go to
in the first place was a lounge & the burgh's lack of good ones for
dark electronic & etherial is manifesting itself in this request. 
Capitulating much to these sorts of request will change the atmosphere
at the club for the worse.  Being the beat obsessed fellow I am, I would
prefer things go further the other direction.... Something akin to the
stuff played on http://www.regenmag.com/podcast.html
which is consistently hard & skillfully quick mixed.  I think too
many attempts at satiating every taste is unhealthy for a club which
wants to attract regulars.

Besides, I think with a venue of Ceremony's history, it will be
difficult to affect any sort of change like that just from the 
perspective of the djs inner mind.  I know when I have a chance
to get out & spin that I take great pride in my ability to fill the
floor with dancers...  Its my main motivation besides showing off 
some obsure tracks that nobody has heard before.  Downtempo will
never provide that kind of result for a dj & it will never give you that
high as a performer.

As an anecdote, I remember my first few visits to Ceremony around 1996/97 & 
I hated the long downtempo breaks between good club songs....  I remember hearing
a remix of Numb's Blood & remembering how much arse it kicked & right afterwards
a 7 minute ambient track & wondering "has the dj lost his mind... people
were just dancing the mad."



Sunday, February 19, 2006, 12:48:47 PM, you wrote:

> Well, only two or three people replied, which isn't quite
> representative.  I would like to hear more feedback.

> But Ceremony is a dance night and built around a dancefloor, so a
> focus on dance music probably won't change.  That's not to say that
> there isn't a place for other formats.  I did a loungey night at The
> Pollinator when it was open, and Electro-Retro was very much the kind
> of thing you'd like.  People working in smaller spaces or on
> weeknights should embrace that atmosphere as well, dealing not just in
> IDM but in other atmospheric music.

> We do happily play "doesn't pack the dancefloor" music for the first
> hour, hour-and-a-half of Ceremony.  But when you're working in a space
> with a large central dancefloor on a Saturday night, a focus on dance
> music makes sense.  We've been successful for long enough that I think
> we're generally doing the right thing; but I do like to engage
> everyone in determining the flavor and spice of the main course.