Monday, October 29, 2007
Going Out: © Murakami and Droid Behavior's 5th Anniversary
Cell phone photo of DJ Krush by Liz O.
It took one hour of pre-Halloween Saturday night traffic, forty minutes of hunting for a parking lot and twenty minutes in line, but the opening party for Takashi Murakami's exhibition at MOCA was worth the wait.
DJ Krush provided the music for the evening-- loud, bass-heavy tracks that crossed genres but morphed seamlessly into hip-hop. While standing in line, we heard him drop ESG, which made us all the more anxious to enter the party. Inside, we were floored (at times, almost literally) by the volume. In all of our years of clubbing, we had never heard a system that could pump music at such volume while retaining such pristine sound quality. We were further astounded by the fact that Krush's monitors were roughly equivalent in size to the regular speakers at your typical L.A. club.
"Think about it," said Carlos. "Those are the speakers just for him!"
(Exclamation point is not used for emphasis, but, simply because we had to shout over the music to mimic a whisper.)
We later learned that Krush was using Kanye West's soundsystem (Kanye was scheduled to play the gala on the following night). I may not like his music, but Kanya has good taste in gear.
I thought that Krush was using Serato, but Carlos had noticed him flipping over the vinyl, indicating that the DJ might have actually been playing off vinyl, but remixing or sampling with Abelton or something similar. Over the course of the night he deftly moved from party beats (was that Man Parrish we heard?) to harder sounds, oftentimes slowing down drum 'n' bass records to fit with the 110 and under beats per minute that comprised the bulk of the set. We were so enamored by his set that it almost didn't matter that, by 10:30, the line for the exhibit was so long that we probably would leave without actually viewing any of Murakami's work.
Fortunately, though, my friend Amy managed to find a security guard who let us in ten minutes or so before the party was set to end. We were able to view the entire exhibit and, without giving away any surprises, I do urge everyone reading this to go.
More information about © Murakami at MOCA's website.
Plus, Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot has a write-up of the gala on his blog.
Cell phone photos by Liz O.
After the Murakami party, Carlos and I headed towards the nether regions of downtown for Droid Behavior's 5th Anniversary party. This was a proper rave, set in a warehouse one of those areas where cops don't patrol. Inside, it was pitch black, save for a few glow sticks and one projection screen in each room.
This being the Saturday before Halloween, half the crowd was dressed in costume. Amy Winehouse seems to be quite popular this year, but there were also some childhood classics in the house (Super Mario Brothers and Rainbow Brite) and a good amount of candy ravers (um, maybe those weren't costumes). British duo Vex'd played a killer set, local Baseck debuted his latest track and Acid Circus and Drumcell joined forces as Duel. The highlight of the evening, though, occurred minutes after Carlos and I left (keep in mind, we left at close to 3 a.m.). You can check out the pyro madness on YouTube.
Labels: DJ Krush, Droid Behavior, Going Out, Murakami
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