A few weeks ago a whole bunch of cassettes from my early forays into the world of DJing found their way back to me. In amongst them was a live recording that was made of (nearly all) of my set that I played on 27th October 2000, at the first birthday party of a pre-club night that I co-ran in Aberdeen for a few years – Triple Bass. Listening to it triggered a whole bunch of memories – well, maybe I’ll use the singular rather than the plural, as it really is just one big memory – trying to separate things into ‘this happened that night, and that happened on this night’ is nigh-on impossible!
Triple Bass was born in late 1999, essentially as an extension of the flat that I shared with 2 others at that time. We were all at university as mature(ish) students, and all had come to be DJs of various sub-genres of dance music through different routes. There was a free-party veteran who was into minimal techno and electro, a raver from the early 90s who loved trance and breaks, and a thrash metalhead who had discovered gabba / hardcore and then hardhouse. There was a heady mix of music emanating from our basement flat in those days!
Needless to say there were more than a few gatherings at this flat, and in order to save our already fractious relationships with our neighbours we decided that maybe we should move the noise somewhere else! We had been to a few events at a basement venue called Drakes Dungeon Bar (we felt at home underground) – this had 2 rooms, the larger of which had a stage, and would actually pay you to put on a night. Bonus! Right from the first night we put on it turned out to be a great idea – the combination of our different-but-related friends groups really gelled, and our once a month Friday events were always a blast. We also invited other DJs to play on our nights, and after a while hit on the idea that every month we would ask someone to play who had never played in public before, and let them decide what timeslot they wanted. This worked brilliantly, and it also meant that our parties were just that, parties – DJs could play whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted – sometimes we had gabba at 8pm, prog trance at midnight. This doesn’t sound like it should work, but in a bar setting (with a small space at front of stage for the dancey types) it did. Good times 🙂
There are many many stories to tell about these nights that ran once a month for over 2 years until Drakes closed in 2003, but they are for another time. There are also (thankfully!) not that many photographs in existence of these parties – it was before the camera on phones became ubiquitous.
This set from the first birthday party was one where I decided to take a sort of mini-journey through the type of electronica I liked when I was a teenager, through some techno (really as a glue to help me mix from one tune to another) and then on to partytime hardhouse. As you can probably appreciate, I was most definitely not sober when I played this, and some of the mixing is a bit sloppy to say the least – you can hear me getting to grips a bit more in the second half. I hope you enjoy this fun hour, and that you can listen to it with party ears as opposed to analytical ones!
The MP3 version can be downloaded by right clicking here and choosing ‘save as’. You can stream from Soundcloud below, and you can also download a lossless AIFF version from there, if HQ audio is your thing.
Tracks:
- M/A/R/R/S – Pump Up The Volume (original 12” mix)
- New Order – Blue Monday (original 12” mix)
- Dead Or Alive – You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) (Performance Mix)
- Adam Beyer & Joel Mull – Remainings II A
- S’Express – Hey Music Lover (Music Is My Life Mix)
- Unknown (Techno)
- Humanoid – Stakker Humanoid
- Unknown (Techno)
- D-Mob Featuring Gary Haisman – We Call It Acieeed (The Living Beat Remix)
- The Cardigans – My Favourite Game (Vengaboys Remix)
- Phatt Bastard – And Da Drum Machine (Original Mix)
- Masters At Quirk – Technology
- BK – Funk Addiction
- Hyperlogic – Only Me (Stimulant DJs Remix)