Another good one.
Kode9 kicked off with an erratic selection of party tunes - Cameo, bits of hip hop. WTF? It was actually pretty good and fair play to him for deviating from the traditional warm up of 70s roots (tho I would have preferred that really!). At some point he went off on a late 90s tangent with a version excursion on either Volume or Baddis Ting. Wicked.
Loefah was up next - I can't remember a lot about his set, but it was well up to his usual standards. I chatted to him briefly a while back about his reggae selections and was surprised to hear how critical he was of himself - I think he's a wicked selector and seems really confident about mashing up eras and styles - something I find really engaging after witnessing lots of brilliantly themed (but predictable) sets by more "traditional" reggae DJs over the years.
Loefah finished up with some dubstep and Coki took over on the same tip. Some Skream* tune got played which had all us old gits furrowing our brows and going "is this dubstep? it sounds like...". Anyway, this followed on with some more garagey type stuff from the d'step 'nuum. No idea what any of it was. Good though. Yeah. Oh yeah, he also boshed out some great late 80s / early 90s raggamuffin biz like Admiral Bailey's "No Wey Better Than Yard" and Shabba's "Wicked in Bed", which got the dancefloor gyrating proper.
Then Kevin Martin blew the roof off. Again. His set was slightly marred by the presence of a couple of retards repeatedly shouting "dubstep! dubstep!" in the quieter bits like he's a fucking jukebox or something. But fortunately we were instead treated to some stone cold killers like:
Smiley Culture- Cockney Translation
Tippa Irie - Lyric Maker (oh yes!)
Cutty Ranks - Limb By Limb
the "Truth & Rights" relick from last year
alongside some Bug classics like "Dem a Bomb We", "Aktion Pak" and "Politicians & Pedophiles" - all of which were dubbed to buggery, ripping Plastic People up into tiny pieces and then stickig it all back together again. Kevin also brought in some more electro-tinges, which was interesting.
More "no-shows" from MCs this time, but it seemed to matter less this time for some reason.
Good turn out from various crews - nods to Boomnoise and Matt B. The place wasn't full by any means, but I thought the atmosphere was great anyway. thank fuck for the aircon!
Hold tight for the next one, big things are promised... sounds like this is just phase one.
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* Thanks, as ever, to Boomnoise for the tune ID
