My memory's a blur so this recap may be a bit disjointed.
For anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area, a jazz club in the Fillmore called
Yoshi's is having an ongoing bi-weekly series of shows called Audio Alchemy, presented by producer Dan the Automator, in which various DJs are invited to do their thing.
I discovered this place in the most unlikely of ways, but it turned out to be a very welcome stumble. This past weekend was headlined by Mix Master Mike of Invisibl Skratch Piklz and Beastie Boys fame, along with Shortkut as the venue's resident DJ.
When I first arrived at the place I felt kinda awkward. The restaurant section was transformed into a lounge/club environment, and since I came alone I couldn't help but feel a bit weird about it. Shortkut was handling the dance floor with very basic mixes of random hip hop and funk songs, and I still wasn't sure what to expect from this whole thing just yet. It was starting to feel like my failed attempt at seeing Ai Kago in LA...except for three key differences: 1) I didn't have to travel far, 2) the music was much better, and most importantly 3) I actually got to see the person I came to see.
After about an hour of basic stuff, Mix Master Mike came in and took over, and compared to Shortkut's warmup his mix was all over the place with constant tempo changes and stuff I wasn't quite sure he was doing due to everyone in the crowd being taller than me and blocking my view.
I really started feeling his work when he settled into a slow, bouncy routine that eventually transitioned into Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", but he definitely had the crowd going the whole time.
Later on he ended his set and we all were instructed to go to another part of the venue, a room that looked more suited for musical performances, where the in-house jazz band was messing around with silly covers of old-school rap songs. Eventually Dan the Automator came out and reintroduced Mike who
started doing another set while the band played along...I've always liked the combination of live instruments with electronic/digital sounds, so it was great seeing it play out like this. After a while the band slowly phased themselves out as Shortkut came out to do a bunch of crazy shit with Mike, and apparently DJ Apollo was backstage, so
he got called out to hang with his boys for a bit. Allegedly Qbert was also in the building, with Dan trying to call out for him and Mike even stopping to contact him by phone.
The turntable setups were interesting...I haven't paid much attention to the turntablist scene so I don't know how long this has been going on, but instead of having boxes of vinyl records, these guys had their mixers hooked up to laptops while each turntable had one singular white disc. It's a pretty awesome way to have access to a big sound library without the clunkiness of having to carry a bunch of records and constantly swap them physically.
Not my videos...a bunch of other people were recording this stuff:
Watching these two veterans go at it the way they did was indeed impressive but also intimidating. I was in awe at how much control these guys had over everything that came out of the speakers, especially from my perspective as a remixer who resorts to ghetto hacked-together software-only methods to integrate a very basic turntablist influence into my beats.
The night may have started out awkward, but I'm so glad I spent the $20 and risked walking the Fillmore at night to see this go down. The experience was inspiring and is making me rethink my own approach to music making. Even now my ears are still ringing, though it might be a problem with the sound system they have there--I spent a lot of time right next to the speakers in the two LA music shows I went to earlier this year and didn't have any hearing problems afterwards.
But I'm definitely considering coming back for future shows (Just Blaze in two weeks, Blackalicious next month), and I'll try not to be alone next time.