Buzzin Electronic Music

Sweatshop at East Village, London – 13th March 2010

House music and disco creates a fuzzy feeling of happiness.  It’s kind of its point.  But to lift it, particularly to lift it to something post 2000 takes more than wizardry with the new software platforms that adorn most DJ booths.

You need soul to be injected into the fray, an understanding of how to take a lilting rolling beat and infect the dance floor with passion.   Sweatshop displayed both an understanding of this and also showed if one DJ gets it, and the other you are playing with doesn’t have quite the same instinctive understanding that the music can fall a bit flat.

6th Borough Project is formed with Graeme Clark known as ‘The Revenge’ and his partner Craig Smith.  The Sweatshop event marked their debut party of their decks and effects set that is taking them across the world.  Now to get one thing straight right away it was a very fun night.  The guys played some brilliant old funk with old school Hip Hop.  They got everyone grinning and dancing by mixing up the genres merging Latin percussion with House, Underground Resistance with Disco and the formula worked.  Mostly.

But, there was a stark contrast between Clark’s performance on the decks with his partner Smith’s.  It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what it was, I suppose it might be an unlearnt understanding of how to manipulate the music to make it something more than just familiar, but to make it new and fresh sounding.  I loved hearing Moodymann ‘Shades of Jae’ dropped by Clark, but it lacked the resonance and power of Clark’s tune selection and DJing skills.

The crowd however, seemed really into it and perhaps my opinion feelings on the night were more pronounced because I was critiquing it.  I really do believe that the partnership will go from strength to strength throughout their tour together.  They played music to make you smile and hanker for the good old House days.

To quote the Eddie Amador track ‘House Music’ that they played… ‘Not everybody understands house music, it’s a spiritual thing, a body thing, a soul thing.’  And it turns out, after attending the Sweatshop night that is absolutely true.