Artists playing "live"

[Guest Elysium Project]

Just my one note.

 

There's no such thing as live in this scene. No matter if a band play something on top of their pre-recorded music it will never be live.

 

It's at best semi live.

[Guest bugbread]

Elysium: Depends how you define the scene. You're 99% right, but one band that I occassionally hear as being part of the scene is the Boredoms, and their live shows are very definitely live: 3 drummers, guitar, bass, trumpet, keyboard (no sequencer or computer, just raw keyboard and effects pedals), occasional kazoo, mouth harp, etc. True, they definitely aren't "pure" psy, but some people might include them within the psy category.

 

Of course, I disagree with them: the Boredom's genre is "Boredoms", but some people are more generous with their genre definitions than I am

[Guest Laaars]

But why do people want live?

The entire scene is based on DJs playing prerecorded music, what matters is the mixing and the selection of songs.

 

A "live" act is stone age thinking. Boring and old. Hyping the artists, nice and all, but dont stop the music! Keep the bassdrum kicking, keep mixing, no silence, no applauses. If you like it, scream.

 

This thread is quite entertaining, there are those that know what its all about and see through it all, and there are the complete fools that think musicians actually could play their tracks live but dont bother to try. That sucks.

Change your way of thinking. Its *ELECTRONIC* music, in the footsteps of Kraftwerk.

[Guest Elysium Project]

youre right bugbread :-)

 

Anyway in my opinion the parties should be purely Dj's since the "live" totally break the flow of a party..... It's another thing about outdoor big festivals...where the live is a more natural part of the performance but in clubs ect. it's damn disturbing and very very boring :-)

[Guest russ]

just got back from a party this weekend that i organized outdoors in japan. let me add some thoughts from the organizer's perspective. we had two "lives". by carefully manipulating the line-up, we managed to incorporate them into the flow without breaking things up, but most times the lives do break up the flow. (i felt the lives really screwed up our event last year). if the lives are also dj'ing, and the artists playing before and after them are their friends and on the exact same page, then a live can add a certain psychological element. having said that, it is a tremendous extra cost (much higher artists fees, big mixer, various synths and effect units) and the value added is not that great. for example, for us the antix live set was very good, but the antix dj set was incredible, at another level entirely. the party was entirely in the dj's hands (barton "antix", sascha "bitmonx", mapusa mapusa, and peter didjital), and the lives were merely a little spice added at just the right moment. but that spice was expensive. especially when you buy gear for a set that doesn't get used for one reason or another. and the stress element is also very high. i have to get up much earlier to do a sound check, solve various technical problems, etc, so by the time the music actually started, i was almost wiped out by the stress and fatigue. setting up a dj booth on stage can be done very quickly with little hassle.

 

son kite does by far and away the best live in the scene in my opinion, nothing else even comes close. and they happen to also be my favorite artists. but having said that, i still would much prefer to hear marcus dj than seb and marcus play live. i have seen them live many times now, so i am used to the sound. there is a limit to how much new music you can write in a year. but there is no limit to a good dj set.

 

some people say the live is interactive, but the dj's are far more interactive in my eyes. for the final 6 hours of our party, we had barton and mapusa and sascha play a ping-pong set, and the energy kept building and building all the way to sunset, when the dance floor was full. totally incredible afternoon...the guys were working together to feed the dance floor...and the crowd was feeding off their interaction...at the end there was this incredible feeling of unity between the dance floor and the stage as everyone was dancing together. this i have never seen with a live.

 

for our first two parties, we had no choice but to include live acts, because the crowd here in japan might not have taken the parties seriously without a live "name" on the flyer. this is rather unfortunate. but once you establish yourself and people trust you, i think you don't need to add a live. for our next event i am going to eliminate the lives completely. 5 dj's, 4 hours each, all friends, all playing as a team, feeding the dance floor till the sun goes down.

[Guest bugbread]

Russ:

 

After the tremendous reception you got with last year's party, you could dress the DJs all up as clowns and still get a good crowd. I had a friend trying to convince me to come, despite knowing how much I dislike prog/minimal, because it was such an excellent party the year before. He was grasping at straws: "Makyo's playing! And, uh...Makyo! And...I'll buy you lunch!" Apparently it was that impressive.

 

Sorry, a little off-topic there.