Waving Not Drowning

Once again, it was festival time last weekend, this time no running around chalets on the west coast of England or hanging out in downtown Detroit. London would be the latest location for some weekend long musical shenanigans, with the Magicwaves party taking place. Calling it a festival is probably stretching it a bit, as it consisted of two nights in Corsica Studios in South London bookended by a couple of small pub parties. So lets go with Magicwaves – A Celebration of Italo Disco.

I always thought it was a ballsy move putting on a gig of this scale in London as it’s not really well known as a hub for the sound but recently it’s popularity has been on the rise. Unfortunately the hipsters have latched onto the sound, with the likes of Heartbreak making waves (pardon the pun) in the city at the moment. Heartbreak, though, are little more than an ugly rehash of the horrible Electroclash scene that flooded London earlier on in the decade. Thankfully there was a lot more on offer throughtout the weekend with the likes of Italo legends Casco, Fred Ventura and Alex Novaga performing alongside many Dutch producers who’ve helped in the rebirth of Italo in the last ten years.

Arriving just before midnight I was pleasantly surprised by both the large turnout and a crowd dominated by folk in Intergalactic FM, Bunker and Ill Disc t-shirts with the scenesters in their retarded get ups few on the ground. Phew. Room 1 was to be dominated by live acts while the Djs would be taking over the controls in Room 2. After knocking about and getting a couple of drinks in, Oppenheimer Analysis were first up for me. The sound was a little bit muffled but the joyous look on the faces of the pair more than made up for it. I’m not massively into their sound but they were generating a good atmosphere and the crowd had certainly come out to party.

Oppenheimer Analysis

Next up was Mr Fred Ventura being backed by Alden Tyrell, a perfect combination. Their set was to prove to be the highlight of the weekend. Ventura was sounding brilliant and the atmosphere in the room was truly electric. A packed and sweaty dancefloor were singing along to every utterance from the man Ventura and the likes of Body Heat and Wind Of Change were truly epic. They rounded up their set with a truly awesome version of the guys recent collaboration, Memories. It started off as the “state of art” remix before the synths from the original blew the whole place away. An amazing end to a set that was pretty much perfect, bar the fact that it could have gone on longer. It’s a rare instance that I’ll leave a Tyrell live set (which was to follow directly after), but after he kicked off with Keep Fooling Yourself and Make the World Go Away from last years The Hasbeens 12″ I decided to make a break for outside to get some fresh air. It was never going to match what had just taken place.

As can be a problem these days in both Ireland and England, it’s easy to loose track of time outside talking shit with folk in the smoking area, and it meant that I missed out on some of Legowelt’s set. What I did see was excellent, with his usual haphazard live shows – which are great partly for the reason that he looks like he’s barely keeping it together, rushing from each piece of kit to the next – always going to throw up some surprises. Someone with such a prolific output is never going to do the same thing twice and this time around it was a set with more disco/italo influenced sounds, akin to older ‘welt, more so than the acid that has been more predominant in his recent releases. His prolific ways also means sometimes I’ve no idea what the songs are he plays but after a whispered “you might know this one” from Danny, he startled everyone with a rather brilliant version of “Africa”. Never one to bore us he proved again why his live shows are some of the most exciting in dance music.

Watching Legowelt also meant that I’d missed out on the beginning of David Vunk’s dj set in Room 2. Gladly, I still caught most of his set, and as ever Vunk’s boundless enthusiasm, technical brilliance and impeccable, nicely obscure selections proved again why he is the best Italo Dj going. Many others tend to mix it up with acid and electro, but with Vunk it’s straight up, non stop Italo Hammers. ISM’s very own Meschi had the difficult job of following Mr Vunk, but he took it down a little in tempo and kept a solid groove going for the next hour or so. A few ropey mixes along the way we shall excuse – it was late on in the night, you can’t expect a man to not have a few tipples as he goes – as the selection was brilliant and rounded up the night nicely as we returned off to waffle a bit more in the smoking area before heading off into the early morning to forget about sleep and party on through the day…

Not bothering with such rudimentary human needs as sleep and food meant that I arrived back at Corsica the next night slightly dishevelled and more than a little late. It meant that I missed out on Alex Novaga’s set, instead arriving in to be confused by what was on in room 1. Was it or was it not Fockewulf 190? It resembled – and sounded – more a weird electrotronic goth group than the men behind such classics as Eagles In The Night and Body Heat. They also had a female vocalist with them and a guy in some swish leather outfit on guitar (??). So instead the first bit of dancing was to take place in room 2 where Casco was bashing out all the Italo hits. And not a whole lot more. There’s nothing wrong with the likes of Spacerwoman by Charlie but it’s the millionth time I’ve heard this and the likes of Dancer by Gino Soccio, and would prefer to hear them dropped inbetween some less obvious cuts but it wasn’t to be. More dissapointing was that he was spinning a lot of dubs instead of the vocal versions, meaning some drunken singing along was not to be.

Electrik Dragon

I opted for some more waffling in the smoking area before Electrik Dragon aka Ricky The Dragon (aka about another thousand alias) took the stage in the main room. One thing that was clearly noticeble on both nights was just how happy all the performers were to be playing to such an enraptured crowd. Huge smiles on their faces and arms waving in the air was the order of the day and it truly did feel like a celebration was taking place. Ricky was the purveour of the biggest smile in London that night as he played a note perfect set composed nearly entirely of unreleased music. Yet, by half way through each song it felt like you’d known them forever. The only released music bookended the set, coming from the “You Can Trust A Man With A Moustache” 12″ compilations on Moustache Records; Davourite and Breakaway. While not quite reaching the lofty heights of Ventura’s performance the night before this was still an unforgetable performance.

The main room had a knack of emptying in seconds whenever a live set finished so it looked a little worrying when Mr Pauli was setting up and there was barely a body on the dancefloor. But his sets are always killer so I wasn’t going anywhere and Joe Hart was dropping some excellent old school electro to keep me shimmying – even though the sound was being decidedly wonky for a bit.  Mr Pauli followed suit and kicked off things with some crisp electro and copious amounts of mic action – of the electronic type – and in no time the room had filled up  and the party was in full swing again. Evertime I see Mr Pauli he plays a different set, in a similar way to Legowelt, it means you can’t just pass him up cause you’ve seen him roll it out before. Once again there was no denying just how much fun he was having as he went from electro through to EBM and disco influenced jams. Magicwaves was never going to be non stop Italo from the word go and this was a perfect summation of the party.

David Vunk at the afterparty

With such a jam packed line up on offer one was never going to see everything they wanted and with the finish of Mr Pauli that was my lot.  In between the messing, the drinking and general banter I caught more than enough to have me perfectly satisfied with the weekends shenanigans. And as if that wasn’t enough we made our way to the afterparty where Ali Renault, Meschi, David Vunk and some others kept our discofingers firmly in the air, till I had to drop out from sheer exhaustion.

It’s hard to tell if something like this could become an annual event but that’s neither here nor there at the moment. Big turnouts, a great atmosphere and some classic performances meant that even if there isn’t a sequel anyone who was there is gonna look back on the weekend for a long, long time with smiles on their faces to match Rickys. As is always the way, these weekends aren’t the same without a crew of messers to keep the carnage going, so shouts to Karl, Andy, the Aoifes, Simon, Meschi, Niall, Paul, Lina (thanks for the photos) and any others that I bumped into a long the way. A quick howya to Jonny5 (bummer your set clashed with The Dragon and Pauli), hopefully next time the encounter will be less brief.