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Shake a leg the French way
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The Smirnoff bash warmed up party animals for New Year's Eve as the clubbing season reaches its peak
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HAVING THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES The party picked up tempo as the night progressed
After bringing top-class DJs from around the world such as Filterheadz and Tom Stephan, Smirnoff Experience, the annual dance fiesta organised by the vodka maker, retuned to Bangalore Friday. In its third consecutive year, the event hosted at Palace Grounds featured two DJs from France, pitting their turntable wits against each other. DJ Matt and DJ Loopkin were the headline DJs while the city's all-time favourite DJ Ivan did the opening act. Besides providing a DJ jugalbandi between Matt and Loopkin, the event brought back memories of a Latin theme party hosted about a month back, by a competing liqueur label.
DJs Matt and Loopkin are synonymous with a unique style of playing club records, which they call Dynamic House. Explaining the concept, Matt says: "DJs world over play house music records of various kinds such as tribal, progressive and retro. Myself and Loopkin mix two such house tracks on the turntables. We mix it dynamically. For instance, we take the vocals of one track and blend it with the bass-line of another."
Loopkin adds: "DJs generally make a common mistake by restricting themselves to one particular genre of music. One guy calls himself a hip-hop DJ, while another is known to play only psychedelic trance. We believe that music should never be slotted. We must combine different kinds of music, and see how it gives rise to a new sound, which has twice the magnitude of energy."
Speaking on the status of dance music culture in India, Loopkin who recently founded his independent music label to encourage wannabe DJs and producers, says: "I have been playing in Mumbai for a few months now, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that Indian audiences are very open to receiving newer forms of music. In France, I have to be very cautious not to get booed off the stage if I play something that the audience is not familiar with. But here I have them coming up to me and asking the name of the track. It's a very satisfying experience playing here." Matt explains further: "Our brand of music is very experimental, and we love to play for people who are receptive to our sounds."
The event began at 8 p.m. with DJ Ivan playing his usual brand of feel-good, sing-along numbers. Ivan, who is just back from his yearly tour of U.K with a bulging bag of records, slipped in a few new mixes as the dance-floor began filling up. VJ Archana kept the audience screaming and jumping off their feet as Matt and Loopkin took center stage at 10 p.m. An hour and a half of dance music was all we were to get, which ensured that the audience made hasty rounds from the dance-floor to the bar and back. A few cops were seen wandering around the venue past 11, but the show went on undisturbed. The duo increased the tempo of their music to insane levels as the audience sweated and matched their moved with the rhythms.
Just as the duo finished their energetic performance at 12.15 a.m., VJ Archana announced an advance Christmas treat in the form of Ivan hitting the console again. The tired party animals regained their energies from nowhere as Ivan urged them to make the best use of the state-of-the-art lighting and graphics.
The party finally ended an hour past midnight, which wouldn't have been a big deal if not for the Cinderella curfew. The event, which promoted intelligent drinking, promised to be back next year with a new bunch of DJs.
A. VISHNU
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