regenerative power of drum and bass

so after teaching all day, on not enough sleep, then setting up the students gig, then doing the gig (played two or three times), then packing down the gig,... by 10:30 i was vacant and nowhere... ate some pasta on the recomendation of spanna, met P, she gave me some ephrigem (that's what it sounded like) - some herbal root thing, met with spanna, found the end (the club), P's ex and spanna's ex there as well,....

how on earth did i dance all night? how do i feel ok now?

the answer ladies and gentleman is the regenerative power of drum and bass and i am here to tell you about it.

me & spanna used to dance to old school jungle years ago, PM scientist, movement & metalheadz (both of which are still going), around that time i was also playing in a breakbeat band hotel full of cops, playing in clubs,...

in the years in between then and now drum and bass became a little more boring, the breaks (beats) more formulaic, less of the chaotic and more of the predictable,...

when we got to the club Gilles Peterson was playing, he who has disappointed once or twice in the past both for me & spangle, but who P loves...

and he didn't disappoint last night, really great sound, mc dynamite on the mic, lovely, lovely bass business going on, quite housy in places, his drum and bass bits didn't do it so much for me...

but we weren't there for him, and just after 12:30 am our reason for being (there) came on in the shape of dj marky, old friend of P's, turntablist extroardinaire, and he proceeded to blow us away for over 4 hours...

his first couple of tunes had the feel of the more recent drum and bass that doesn't do it for me, but either i opened my ears or he switched to a new thing because i danced almost all night to his set, messy breaks, fantastic sound, huge bass...

one moment: he puts on this acid sounding riff, 3's over the 4 beat, builds up, a sound and feeling i love, it reaches it's apex, i leap into the air, as my feet touch the ground a huge messy, bass driven sound breaks over us and the place goes wild... within seconds it stops, rewinds are called for, me & P yelling at the dj, my voice almost completely gone at this point but i'm shouting all the portuguese swear words i know, it starts again, we know it's coming so it's even better, the break comes in, what a sound, it stops again... more shouting, hands in the air, once more the build up... finally the whole tune is allowed to run it's course and it is amazing...

how nice to have both P and spangle there as well, what love there was in that room, spanna left around 4, me and P stayed almost to the end, 4:45 we stumbled outside, exactly 12 hours ago in fact, had a non-verbal exchange of yells with spangle's ex, spoke a little with P's ex...

P was amazing, so the dancer, fantastic that we've finally gone out dancing together... also one or two beautiful slow kisses somehow mirroring the deep, deep basslines while the uptempo breaks shook over our heads...

x