Hammered in Hamilton, Twisted in Tauranga

"We're changing clubs. This place is fuckin' dead. We're heading to a Jaeger bar - you can play there, but you've gotta go NOW!" Thus began one of the stranger episodes of my life as a DJ.

It's Friday night and the Noize Control circus has moved onto the port city of Tauranga on the East Coast of New Zealand. The weather's been spectacular with torrential downpours mingling with biblical outbursts of radiant sunshine, but now we're at the business end of the day and all is not well with the club I've been booked to play in. The owner has done a spectacular volte face and left us with a hillbilly-styled bar to play in on a postage-stamp sized PA, and has by all accounts done little or no promotion for the night, so local legend and all-round crazy 'Tommy' (I think!) has decided to take matters into his own hands.

"This ain't right bru!" he hollers in a thick local drawl, "you're Elite Force man, I luv your shit - I gotcha back man, I ain't hiving thisss,  I GOTCHA BACK MAN!". With that, we speed off in convoy to a brand new Jaeger bar called Imbibe which is a few miles out of time & situated in a most unlikely shopping mall. Now we know where the people are. The place is rammed. It's launch night. The reaction couldn't be warmer but I'm reticent about kicking anyone off the decks ... 

.... 5 minutes later I have a pint of jack & coke in hand and the local DJ has very graciously welcomed me with open arms ... and then, it's ON. It may be a bar and sound control have their eyes on the dB meter, but it's a grand couple of hours. Afterwards, I speak to a guy who is thrilled to bits to have seen me play, completely by chance.

"OMG, I have not come out in a year and the one night I come out I see my idol EF! This is better than my wedding day". His wife is standing next to him, eyes like daggers.

The night before had been Hamilton's turn, and boy did they deliver. I'd been slightly perplexed beforehand by how keen the locals were to tell me in no uncertain terms that Hamilton is "The STD capital of New Zealand" (with no little pride it has to be said), but what no one warned me was that they RAGE HARD TO BASS. 

VIDEO (HAMILTON)

By midnight the Outback Inn was still filling up & I started with some ease-in tracks, but by the time 12.30 came around it was jammed in there, and by 1am had turned into a proper madhouse. Moshpit frenzies closed things out and the excellent Daniel Farley took a full floor to the close. Afterwards the night became lairy & whilst I bailed early I wasn't surprised to find that the promoters and their crew had a new badge of honour to wear the following day.  

"Banned from all Ibis Hotels"

New Zealand's been cracking and all that remains is to say a massive thank you to everyone I met, and especially for the kings at Noize Control for putting so much work into the shows. Big ups Jaycen, Ben, Nergal & all crew :)

An Auckland Sauna

An hour in now. Everyone is wringing wet, soaked to the skin. The Be Club in Auckland is jammed, the sound system throbbing, the beats bangin'. My knees are turning to jelly in the airless booth. Air-mad punters have turned the fans on themselves. It feels like I'm sweating out - might even hit the deck at this rate ... and with that I dial it back a notch or two and pace myself to see this epic 2 & a half hours through.

There's a real intensity in the air tonight - a fair few people have been waiting for years for me to make it back to Auckland after my one & only appearance some four years back - and it's an inspiration to feel that kind of energy. I'm booked as Elite Force but with Zodiac Cartel's name also on the bill, it's a tricky juggling act at times to keep everyone happy, but juggling's what I do and it seems to build pretty nicely to a dubstep conclusion, despite losing a few to heatstroke along the way.

All in all a massive buzz & now it's time to kick back for a few days ... well, when I say kick back, I mean work obsessively on the laptop - I'm midway through a Zodiac Cartel remix of Non-Believer & wanna get that in some shape to play at the next show in Hamilton on Thursday :)

Hanging Laundry out to Dry

After what seemed like an eternity of traveling, re-grouping, sleeping, not sleeping, the Australian Tour finally got underway last night at Chinese Laundry, and my, what a way to start!

The Laundry's one of those rare beasts - a club that remains, after all these years, consistently 'on the money'. When I last played here two years ago it was around the time that I was dropping my very first series of dubstep Revamps and Re-edits and I remember getting the distinct impression that the floor didn't quite know what to make of them. Fast forward two years and Friday night is reserved for Bass Music in all it's fine manifestations, and there were no such issues with pretty much anything I played in what I'd describe as a kitchen sink set.

The energy levels built and grew throughout towards a dubstep conclusion & the welcome couldn't have been warmer from the packed room's Sydney massive. I salute you all ... I couldn't have asked for a better way of kicking off my trip down under.