Slam’s two weeks Down Under

Slam’s two weeks Down Under

3 November, 2009 | 8.07AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: slam, soma recordings

Scottish techno DJs Slam have just returned from a memorable two-week tour of Australia where they experienced apocalyptic dust storms, police trouble, and haunted venues, as well as club and festival gigs in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and Byron Bay.

Slam put together a diary of their two-weeks Down Under for Beatportal, which includes videos, important tracks, photos, and thoughts from the hazy road.

Read on for their full exploits.

THURSDAY

We arrive in Melbourne on Thursday evening after a mammoth schedule of flights (because we live in Glasgow, it always involves way too many flights).

Several sedatives, sleeping aids, and shit Hollywood blockbusters later, and we arrive feeling surprisingly fresh. Signs at the airport reveal that TV crews are filming for the Aussie border patrol show Nothing To Declare.

Given that I [Stuart] have decided to only take my computer bag and an Asda bag for a 12 day trip to the land Down Under due to the aforementioned flight schedule, I look rather suspicious. Fuck I feel suspicious - a bit like Howard Marks with a high visibility jacket on.

I try to find a couple of dope smoking surfer dudes to hide behind when filing through customs, but have to settle for pensioners and business men.

As luck would have it, I slipped through there like slime down a wet hole. Orde however wasn’t so lucky. After some questioning and mild harassment, they let him go.

It also appears that the bag he so foolishly checked in predictably, never made the connection.

We meet our driver and it’s time to hook up with the Silicone Soul guys and our tour manager/tour organizer Terry.

A big meal is planned with all of us and the guys from Dark Beat (the organisers of tomorrow night’s party at Melbourne’s now infamous Brown Alley).

We eat Italian food and drink copious amounts of red wine in the belief that it will somehow fool our body clocks into believing it is night.

Not so! I toss and turn like a demented chicken until daylight finally breaks through the window.

On the other hand the red wine seems to work for Orde, and he so kindly offers to bring me breakfast, and with a bit of food in the old Gulliver I sleep like a stick until the late afternoon.

FRIDAY

It’s time to go walk about and as we are situated just round the corner from Chapel Street, one of Melbourne’s busiest shopping areas, the place is littered with cool shops, bars, cafes, and restaurants.

It’s the perfect spot for a coffee and justification for leaving the hotel and actually seeing something.

In Melbourne’s rush hour traffic we head to Kiss FM for a quick radio interview where we meet Fergie who is also on tonight’s bill.

We hear all sorts of crazy stories about his last tour in Australia, and quite frankly the nosy bastard in me wants to know more. But conveniently for him, he says he can’t remember a thing, and so it’s left for the man at Kiss to remind him of some of his misdemeanors that have clearly left an impact on the Australian public.

After a collective disco nap, we all wake up and try to charge up for tonight’s gig. We arrive at the club at around midnight and the streets of Melbourne are buzzing. Judging by the line around the corner it looks as if we’re in for a good night.

The suspiciously named Brown Alley club, so called because that’s exactly where it’s located, is a labyrinth of rooms with an amazing roof terrace and several small rooms off that.

We play in the largest of the floors downstairs in the main room. We arrive inside to the sonic boom of the Martin Audio soundsystem and a visual assault from six massive TVs that hang behind the decks.

It’s the perfect entrance to a club and Craig and Graeme from SS play some really cool deep techy house which the crowd lap up.

By the time we hit the decks at 1.30 the place is packed all over and the crowd are up for a party. There are loads of ex-pats and people with English, Irish, and Scottish accents, each with their own story to tell of how they got to be in a place so far away from home.

Orde drops Julien Chaptel’s ‘Damien’s Joint’ on Remote Area and the place grooves away.

I then drop Okain ‘Where Is Monday’ on Quartz, and the atmosphere in the place goes up a notch further.

The set reaches fever pitch when we drop DJ Madskillz’ remix of Salvatore Freda and Volta’s ‘Tiramisu’.

Here’s a video of Orde and I dropping ‘Tiramisu’.

We finish playing at 4.30 and disappear into the labyrinth of the club, where we end up in a back room somewhere armed with double Jacks and blacks.

There are lots of weird and wonderful characters in there with some more crazy stories to tell, and we loose track of time, finally stumbling out of there at 7am with one thing on our minds: sleep.

SATURDAY

After a mammoth 10 hour sleep we awake at around 6pm and get ready for another night on the town. Given that our next gig isn’t until tomorrow night we decide to go for dinner on Chapel Street with some friends of Terry’s.

We decide to play a few tunes at Killing Time, which is a kind of club-cum-pub, with a knowledgeable crowd. Its owner Cam is a bit of a character and hasn’t been to bed from the night before it seems.

A girl leans into the DJ booth and instead of asking for some R&B, like we initially expected, she asks what the record is. It’s Nick Curly’s new ‘AK’ on Cecille.

We finish up with an old favorite of ours - Kevin Saunderson’s ‘Groovin Without Doubt’, an old one on KMS.

Afterwards we decide to go and check out a couple of clubs - The Lounge and F4 - where we meet up with Luke McD, nicknamed “Melbourne’s techno porn star”. With his afro and seventies moustache his look certainly fits the handle.

When we leave it is impossible to get a taxi and the streets are littered with guys and girls wearing black and white football scarves - it’s the Aussie rules football semi final between St. Kilda and Geelong.

Orde does one of his disappearing acts and when we arrive back at the apartment he’s not there. Terry looks concerned that one of his DJs has gone walk about and got lost, or possibly stabbed, but Orde eventually arrives safe and sound after about an hour and a 5km walk across town. Tomorrow we hit Brisbane.

SUNDAY

We arrive back at Melbourne airport late on Sunday night for our flight to Brisbane feeling a bit spaced and jaded.

Once we get through security we rock up sic and have some Chinese noodles at a noodle bar by the gate.

We watch on in utter bewilderment at two older guys, who clearly fancy themselves as choreographers, draw out their moves on paper, before getting up and demonstrating to each other just how it’s done for real.

Off course we laugh like two schoolboys that have just heard a friend make a rude noise in class.

Feeling mischievous, I then decide to try and film them with strategic positioning of our digital camera. Our thinking is that this will make a brilliant Spike Jonze style video with some rather disturbing dark electronic music affixed as a bed behind it.

Sadly we forget to switch the bloody thing on and all is lost.

When we arrive in Brisbane the promoter Rich is already waiting to take us to the club - his fear is that with it being a Sunday, people will leave if we don’t hurry and get to the club.

It turns out to be a bit more low key than the Melbourne show, and like a lot of Sunday nights - this one’s for the heads.

When we arrive the crowd seem pleased to see us and we’re straight onto the decks. The sound is incredibly loud and at one point a girl comes up and asks me to turn it down, a bonafide career first.

She then hands me a piece of paper that says, “If you don’t turn it down I’m leaving”. “Cool, leave” I say, so she storms off. I feel happier when she’s gone.

We play Rene Van munster’s remix Of Kyle Watson ‘Big House’ on Dubnoir and then Radow’s ‘No Exuse’ on Greelpound.

The crowd seem to really enjoy the music, but there is something a little strange about the place. It’s not until the next day that we find out from Rich that the place is supposedly haunted. When the sound guy went into the basement to get us a second plug track he supposedly saw a strange white light.

Was the crazy girl just a figment of our imagination, or an illusion, in all that confusion? Who knows?

GOLD COAST, MONDAY/TUESDAY

Australia needs the gold coast the same way America needs Las Vegas, and to be frank the place is a little bit tacky, in a sort of Ibiza San Antonio way.

But who’s complaining? It has some of the best beaches known to man, and with pure golden sands stretching for miles, and massive waves, it’s no wonder they call it Surfer’s Paradise.

We strike gold, so to speak, and find ourselves in two massive bachelor pad style apartments overlooking the sea on the 20th floor.

However because we have one of these monstrosities each, and the security is tighter than the zip on a paranoid US border patrol’s fanny pack, it’s difficult to get in touch with each other.

So we have to go down to the bottom floor, and then ring a buzzer, so that the other person can come down and let you in, so on, and so forth.

By default we keep meeting up at the café around the corner on the beachfront, and we seem to be synchronized in our timing.

When we wake up on the Tuesday morning, the gold in the Gold Coast takes on a completely different meaning and as we look out of our collective windows there is surreal, apocalyptic sight in front of our eyes.

The whole sky has turned golden orange and the sun looks like the moon of a strange planet poking through the sky. It turns out it is Australia’s worst dust storm in over 70 years and suddenly we feel quite privileged to see such a sight.

WEDNESDAY, BYRON BAY

Later on that day we make the hour long drive up to Byron Bay, with our lungs full of strange red dust.

Cars are completely covered in the stuff, and you can still feel the heat though the haze. We have to keep washing the windscreen with fresh bottled water. It all seems a bit bizarre and I feel like we should be in a scene from an old Mad Max movie.

Here’s a video that gives you some idea of what the duststorm looked like:

When we arrive at Byron Bay it’s not exactly how we imagined it. Nothing ever is! It seems quite sleepy and mellow, like a wild west frontier town with cool shops and cafés.

The place is however, full of backpackers, freaks, rich kids, and hippies, and there’s an old acid casualty ranting and raving to anyone who will listen about some surfer’s festival happening at the weekend.

Later that night we have dinner with Silicone Soul and Terry, and a guy from Melbourne called Tony. We drink lots of wine and try and block out some bad news we have just received from home.

We end up quite drunk and decide to try out the delights of the Byron Bay nightlife, and we all end up in the Beachy (so called because, you’ve guessed it, it’s a pub next to a beach) with an entourage that keeps growing progressively throughout the evening. 

I begin to think all is not well in paradise when I read a sign that states you can’t buy double measures at the bar. You can’t even have a drink on the rocks without s mixer, so it’s a super huge Jack and black with way more black than Jack.

On the the way back, Tony’s car won’t start and it’s left to the promoter’s girlfriend Alana to sort us a lift back home. She asks a friend to oblige and we all pile in to the car blissfully unaware that the sunnyside of paradise also has a dark side.

This particular dark force being the Police Force and as the blue and red flashing lights come souring through the back windscreen we feel like we’re A: in trouble (possibly deported), and B: in one of those TV ‘caught on camera’ cop shows.

The cops roll up to the side of the car and show little or no interest in us. Instead they decide to breathalize the driver. Fortunately she’s clean, which is more than can be said for the vehicle.

It turns out she has just bought the car and the car is not licensed yet (she didn’t know). She gets done for driving a vehicle without registration, and is fined a thousand Australian dollars.

Because she only has three points left on her license, it means she loses her license. And all because we needed a lift. We feel bad! Very bad! 

THURSDAY

We have one more day before we play our Friday night gig in Byron Bay, so we decide to accompany Craig and Graeme from Silicone Soul to Dave Basek’s studio just outside Byron Bay.

The studio is in an amazing location on a hill with panoramic views across the valley. We talk about equipment and dub reggae, and he shows us his collection of vintage tape delay machines while Craig and Graeme are keen to make some adjustments to a track they’ve already writen.

We decide to stay away from the studio because we were constantly in there before we left on tour, so instead we head for the beach.

FRIDAY

We spend the day chilling and relaxing before tonight’s gig at La La Land. We’re really not sure what to expect from tonight’s show. The SS boys played there the night before and it wasn’t great apparently.

Also there’s a big festival called Park Life on, so add to that the prospect that our music might just be too underground for the crowd, and we’re starting to get a little concerned that we may be all alone, left to die of thirst in the company of small but dangerous marsupials in the outback.

When we arrive at the club the local DJs are playing a strange breed of electro house which the crowd seem to know and love.

Next up is John Course, a well known DJ in Australia from Sydney, and despite our previous fears, the club is busy and the dancefloor is full.

It feels a little bit competitive in the booth, and if there is one thing 20 years of DJing has taught us it’s that there is always a way of getting your music across.

We play it reasonably safe, and open up with Analogue People In A Digital World ‘Rose Rouge’. 

Then we continue with stuff like Paul Ritch and Anton Pieete’s ‘The Opera’ on 100% Pure.

The crowd seem to enjoy it and we enjoy it too. Once we finish, we eat these honorable pasties from an all-night bakery around the corner.

SATURDAY

Feeling a bit queasy after last night’s festivities, and of course those dodgy pasties, we make our way up to Sydney, and on to the last leg of the tour.

Our plane arrives in Sydney an hour and a half late which is not good news for us, as we are on a tight schedule.

Terry has hired a hire car for the three hour drive to the Earth Dance Festival. We drive through Sydney and over the harbor bridge passing Sydney’s Opera House to our right.

Sadly, there’s no time to stop. We skirt through small towns and open skies for what seems like an eternity and end up driving past roads named things like ‘Cranky Lane’ and suddenly we all feel like we’re in an episode of Scooby Doo.

When we finally reach the festival, the drive to get up on site is through water and over rocky hilly terrain, until we finally arrive to what can only be described as a summer camp gone wrong.

I say wrong of course in the most endearing way possible (like a rapper would say ‘bad’ when he means ‘good’).

The festival is right smack bang in the middle of the bush, and the night sky above reveals a million stars creating an eerie glow.

I must admit arriving here 100% straight is a bit daunting as most of its patrons have already been here and awake for 36 hours.

We play our set to an enthusiastic crowd.

Here’s some video footage we took from the festival.

Sami Wentz ‘Tallo Blindado’ on Resopal, and Oliver Moldan ‘South Beach Shuffle’ on Faithmusic are some of the highlights of the night.

Once we’re finished there’s no time to hang about, so it’s straight back in the car for the three hour drive back to Sydney for Chinese Laundry.

When we arrive at the Laundry, the place is so packed we have to go around the corner to the fire escape to get in, for easy access to the DJ booth.

It turns out to be one of the best gigs of the tour. The Laundry is another caverness den of brick walled rooms.

The place goes nuts right till the end. It’s so dark in there that our camera fails to pick anything up but screeching audio.

We play a bit harder tonight, and some highlights include our own ‘Hot Knives’ and DJ Wady & Rayzil’ mix of Chus & Ceballos’ ‘Iberican Sound’ on Stereo Productions.

Afterwards we head to the Establishment Hotel for a well earned four hour sleep before we have to head to Perth for the final gig of the tour.

SUNDAY

We arrive in Perth the next day after a four hour flight we feel remarkably fresh. Tonight’s gig has an early start and an early finish due to Perth licensing laws.

It also turns out that the Perth leg of the Parklife festival is also on which means that our gig at Shape club is working as a kind of unofficial after hours for the festival.

Again it’s a very good turn out and the promoter Flex is buzzing about the night. There’s a very good and knowledgeable crowd up here in Perth, which means we can play a lot deeper and housier than the night before.

We play Hermanez’s Zen mix of Alex Moments ‘Alveus’ on Monique Speciale, and then Nick Curly’s ‘Bulgaria’ on Cecille.

Then we drop our own, as yet, unreleased mix of Josh Wink ‘Everybody To The Sun’, as well as our forthcoming mix of Pan Pot ‘Face To Face’, and finally we finish with Micheal Cleis’ epic remix of Spencer Parker ‘The Beginning’ on Buzzin’ Fly.

It’s another great night and we celebrate the end of the tour by hitting China Town for a late night meal with Flex and his business partner.

All of us try to bribe the waiter to put some alcohol in tea pots, speakeasy style, before we hit a rooftop for an afterhours.

It was a mammoth three year wait for us to finally return to Australia, and all I can say is that it was well worth the wait.

Hopefully it won’t take us so long to return next time.

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