Electric Zoo 2012: Friday Review / Track IDs

Have to start these reviews somewhere so why not start with Friday? After (somewhat) recovering from a very, very busy 3 days of nonstop dancing, I am finally able to clear my head and recall what the hell happened during this marathon of a weekend. As most people did on Friday, our schedule brought us to the Fool's Gold tent for the majority of the day with stops off at Netsky, Reboot, and Luciano throughout.

Treasure Fingers

Treasure Fingers started out the day for us playing his usual mix of nu disco fire and chiller electronic tracks.  It was a perfect way to start the day as everyone's feet needed a little bit of a warm up for what was about to ensue. One of the best tracks that we did not suspect him to play was by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, who we recently saw at LPR, called Tapes & Money.

Hot Creations Boat Cruise Review

All summer long, Verboten has been killing it with their techno/deep house/tech house parties all over the city and they are showing no signs of letting up. I initially was really looking forward to the Guy Gerber Supplement Facts boat cruise but ended up missing it due to some last minute vacation time. Thanks to Verboten, I was given a second chance at glory and immediately purchased Hot Creations tickets upon their release.

We started off the night exploring the massive boat, the Hornblower Infinity, which apparently can hold  700 - 1,000 people. As per usual, Verboten kept it at a reasonable capacity where there was plenty of room to dance and mingle with everyone. After exploring the boat's ins and outs while dancing to the music all around us, we ended up on the top deck with Infinity Ink who absolutely crushed it. We first recognized some Dirtybird tracks such as Justin Martin's Ruff Stuff:

Hit the jump to read the rest of our review below.

TEED Live at LPR

Last Wednesday, a few of us here at Sound Singularity had the luxury of seeing Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs live at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC. For those of you unfamiliar with Orlando Higginbottom, he is an all across the board electronic producer from England.  He loops his own vocals over a variety of beats, ranging from slow nu-disco to up temp electro.  He released his highly praised debut album "Trouble" in June of this year and has been touring globally sharing his dancey goodness with the world.

Although his lasted only a little over an hour, TEED managed to seamlessly mix in originals such as "Garden" and "Promises" with some raw Jungle tracks which sent the crowd into a frenzy.  The highlight surely had to be the conclusion of the show which saw arguably his two most popular tracks "Tapes and Money" into "Household Goods".  The energy from the crowd during these final two tracks left everyone dying for more, but alas there was no encore on this night.  All in all, this is easily one of the three best live performances I've seen all year.  If you missed him on his last visit to the USA, don't sleep on him the next time around.  He is only getting started and with this diverse of sound he won't be disappearing anytime soon.  Check out the videos below for a taste of the magic that is TEED!

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Garden

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - American Dream pt. 2

Totally Enrormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Tapes and Money

Hard Summer: Night 1 Review

This past weekend I was lucky enough to get to attend the first night of Hard Summer in Los Angeles.  As a Southern California Native, I have had the chance to attend quite a few Hard events, and I think this one was the most well-run one I have been to (particularly for how large it was).

We arrived shortly after 9, which is quite a bit later than we had planned but it always seems to take longer to get to these events than expected (especially when traveling from Hollywood to downtown L.A.).  The line to the entrance and the security line only took about 15 minutes total, which I was impressed with considering we arrived at the busiest time.  Security was pretty strict and actually made everyone take off their shoes, which I have only ever seen happen a couple of other times. However, I do understand Hard being a bit uptight, as they don't want to have the same poor relationship with The City of Los Angeles as Insomniac does.

The venue was The Los Angeles Historic State Park.  Hard Summer has been held here ever since they got shut down at the Forum in 2009.  People have a lot of mixed opinions on this venue, but I really like it.  It is centrally located to downtown L.A. (if you are facing the Hard (main) Stage, you get a gorgeous view of the downtown L.A. skyline).  There tends to be a lot of space, which can often be a problem at events like this.  And, it is located right by the metro.  Hard really took advantage of the proximity by making admission to Hard also include free rides on the Metro, and extending the Metro's hours until 2:45 am. 

Breakbot

We immediately headed straight for the Discoteque stage where we saw the last few minutes of Oliver.  I didn't see enough to comment on it too much, but he seemed to really have the crowd moving.  After Oliver came Breakbot, whose groovy bass lines were a perfect way to kick off the festival.  He played a lot of the favorites, but I think the highlight for me was an edit of 'Everybody Dance Now' (which, until that night I never thought could have been played a set without sounding cheesy) mixed into 'New Lands' by Justice.  Check out a video of it below.

Hit the jump to see more of my review on Hard Summer w/ Miike Snow, Bloc Party, and Boys Noize!

Pryda @ Beekman (Pacha NYC) Review/Rant

Before I go on any rant about how the event was organized and whatnot, I will say (and later review) that I went to Pacha afterwards to catch Prydz and had a great time because you simply cannot go wrong with Prydz. However, the Pacha venue proved to be disappointing for many, as usual.  Luckily, it seems that they have issued full refunds through their ticket provider, clubtickets.com, for this event or free tickets for Thomas Gold at Pacha on August 11th.  All you have to do is email helpdesk@clubtickets.com.  I only recently did this and have not heard back yet (UPDATE: You can get tickets or a full refund, either one works and clubtickets is VERY quick and professional about it all) and I would recommend including your confirmation number and event name in your email to expedite the process.  Anyway, on to the rant/review.

To start, I got to Beekman at around 11:30PM and was greeted by a massive line to get inside.  I imagine this was largely due to Identity ending but I still had never seen the line there stretch so far back.  For Maya Jane Coles and Maceo Plex at Beekman, the line was practically nonexistent and there was a very solid crowd there.  Granted, the Maya Jane Coles crowd was not oversold like this was.

Eventually, everyone made it into the venue despite the crowd and got to enjoy the legend that is Prydz.  Only problem was that this fun lasted for about 30 minutes tops.  The question everyone is wondering is how on earth does something like this happen?  Well, in all honestly, I am about as baffled as everyone else out there.  If they had bothered to look into ANY of the past events at Beekman (Maya Jane Coles/Maceo Plex, Art Department, Knife Party) they would have known that the sound had to be reduced at all of these events and some even shut down for a little while.  This was with the venue being much less packed too.  Oh, and I almost didn't touch on the bathroom situation which was the worst I've seen anywhere but whatever, all I know is that entire boardwalk was covered in piss (including the mall).

After being completely shut down, they decided to try and salvage what was left of the night by moving the party to Pacha, where Madeon was already playing.  I'm fairly certain every single person at Beekman groaned in unison upon hearing this announcement as everyone thought it would be much more packed than Beekman was.  Some went, some did not, my friends and I went to the nearest Duane Reade to regain our buzz (great decision might I add) and then proceeded to Sullivan Room for Justin Martin.  Some of us actually went in but the majority of us ended up sucking it up and moving on to Pacha rather than coughing up more cash.