Preparty at mi casa w/ some kfc and jrod's spaghetti, beer and crown and gina, david (aka little lusty), rubes, jrod, and yoshi...spin some jz sets and get a little lubed. Then a long cab ride later we're at the Brite Bar and preparing for the nights festivities.
Short walk later, we skate past the massive line outside and get whisked into Crobar no problem, thanks David. Even get Igor's sneaky ass in with us. Head into the vip room, get a round of drinks which is more than the admission would have been and head out to the floor where Gaby Dershin (of Astro & Glyde) is housing up the crowd for a room already pretty packed before midnight. A little balcony leering and listening to his funkiness, then a little hip hop in vip and chilling, and bam Sasha hit the decks at 1am.
Sasha comes on and immediately goes into darker prog house drenched in melody....beautiful melodies laid over driving rhythms and basslines. Weaving in and out of the tracks at will, looping stuff, making spots harder than usual. Then he got harder than normal and sort of read the crowd and drove the room more than he usually does, mixing in some breaks, techy beats, an occasional acid thumper, all mixed nicely with great transitions...it almost sounded preprogrammed in that way, maybe that's the Ableton at work, but man was it good.
Like any night at the club, time sorta melted into itself and the events became more of an experience, than a timeline. But at one point, i remember standing on the balcony listening with Rubes and basically talking about how this seemed to be the birth of something big in the industry, our scene, or just new york. Like a Danny at arc thing....when that dark tech house all took us on amazing rides. Sasha for many has always been hit or miss for many and now he just seems to be hitting on all cylinders and it is a sight to see!
On to his protegee James Zabiela, who is just flat talented...almost like a young Skywalker, particularly in the Storm Trooper black tee he was wearing. Kid gets on the decks at 4am and brings records and cd's back into the mix immediately going for the jugular as he turns the Sasha 3 hour build and purge into a harder breaks and acid throwdown w/ all the little JZ add-ons: loops, effects, vocoder's, samples up the wazoo, scratching over tracks. The kid is a musical encyclopedia and the PERFECT compliment to Sasha. This is where the dance wheels really started turning for many of us...you couldn't help it, it was either standing there watching jaw ajar or dancing as everything was so massive it just hit you deep inside and made ya move. Great set, he really pushed the system and it got muddy at points, but no fault of his, it was just massive....not programmed to build like Sasha's, programmed to kill.
Around 7am, they tagteamed for the rest of the night and they had Jordan/Pippen chemistry up there...laughing and smiling and fuckin with each others tracks...really fun too watch. Alot of vocal tracks and samples, but it all worked really well. Best tagteam i've seen in a while....the best part was when JZ was looping this vocal that said "You Are The Frequency" w/ a deep male voice and Sasha dropped The Killers-Mr. Brightside (Thin White Duke remix) on top of it. Crobar went wild, especially us, danced our hearts out...even little lusty knew all the lyrics and shook his booty.
Then Zabs took it down a bit with a darker remix of Depeche Mode-World In My Eyes and an effects driven electro house remix of Depeche Mode-Enjoy The Silence, then he encored with a reggae infused house track with a sing along quality to it (someone please id) and his vocodered Tttthank Youuuuuu!!!! Just great stuff all around, thanks Crobar this has turned into a great residency and it was especially fun to hang with little lusty, its great watching the kid become a man....makes his older brother proud.
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