The latest clubbing trend across Europe at least, seems to be the After Hours scene. This means going to a club around 6am, with headlining DJs often coming on 11 am or later and shows lasting until late on Sunday evening. This doesn’t bode well for work on Monday, especially since there is a fair bet that to last from Saturday night until Sunday afternoon you have probably imbibed something illegal. The consequence of all this has been perhaps a greater emphasis on performance. Not of the DJ, but of the music. The music has to work in a more productive way to keep it all going so long. A side effect of this is some particular strains of electronic music with a heavy chemical element to the sound. It is almost as if the music itself needs to talk directly to the neurotransmitters to feed them forward into some perpetual frenzy of confusion, eleation and unknown pleasure. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is a track by Oni Ayhun from last year.
Oni Ayhun is the nom de plume of Olof Dreijer, one half of Sweden’s now defunkt electro super group The Knife. This track is almost uninteligible from a certain point of view, but its uncompromising weirdness is particularly unique and psychedelic. However, it does suggest a note of caution: there is always an end to excess and while now this kind of music is still “peaking”, there will come the inevitable come down one day.
While I'm stalking your blog... Love Oni Ayihun. New Jason Fine remix worth checking, with Ben Klock (I think? or one of the ostgut gang) on the flip.) OAR004 is a killer, but 003 is probably better.
ReplyDeleteI remember afterparties in Japan, weird fucked up people there. Ketamine was popular, and those Japanese that would be regulars would be well fucked up. "The nail that sticks out must be hammered down", but those that resist stick even further out