Thru the Eye of Obscure

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Number8wire rundown
DDog reflects on the Number8wire gig

I would just like to take an opportunity to give mad props to everybody who made Number8wire such a crazy evening. Things started a little late with the party not kicking off until just before 11pm. But it was all good, Nocturnal began spinning some funky techno numbers to those arriving. Unfortunately for him I had to cut his set in half so we could keep all the producers sets on time.

Jet Jaguar got things rolling on the live tip with a set of very chilled tracks. It was a cool way to ease into proceedings for those arriving with Michael dropping some very phat slightly hip hop influenced beats.

Aspen followed Jet and remained on the mellow tip for awhile before building it up to some very nice tech house style tracks which were slightly better suited for some dancefloor action.

A couple of red lasers were cranked up during Bevans ambient like beginnings, one produced some very nice tunnel effects which had a few very caned looking people quite mesmerised. The way they were situated behind the acts produced some trippy sillouettes. The blue argon was started a little later and interacted with the disco balls, fucking up a lot of peoples heads. Props to Tony for the lightshow.

After Aspen, Isolation played a nice set of a lot of newer material. Unfortunately though I missed most of it. Only really catching 'Isolate' a classic track which is almost a Grind anthem after the response it recieved at Lab13, our very first party.

Things got really serious after Isolation with the Wellington debut of Baitercell and Scattergram straight outta Kog Transmissions in Auckland. Flying down fresh from the Baitercell release party on Friday night (great CD guys, thanx for hooking me up with a copy Chris).

They played a set mixing up tracks from both acts during an hour and half set. They fully tweaked the sound system so much so I was recieving complaints about the severity of the high end. So after getting them to turn it down a little i joined the now packed dancefloor.

Wicked set and definatly best response of the evening they whipped the crowd into a frenzy, dropping a mix of breaks, trip hoppy/propellerheads/chemical bros styles and some other seriously funky action. Their set was marred a little by a few sound difficulties caused by the serious humidity fucking with some of the equipment. The end of their set was greeted by a round of warm applause. Expect to see them boys back in town real soon at the next Grind event in about 8 weeks time.

The final set of original material was a team up by LRS and Polarity. Beginning with some mad scratching of a robotic voice it quickly dropped into Polarity's 'We're Here' which features on the #8wire CD. Absolutely wicked set but it too was affected  by a wee sound glitch. However it was all good, even dropping into some wild tech step like beats for a bit of variation.

Agent99 rounded out the evening with some of her typically hard edged techno before Nocturnal stepped up again for another quick spin.

Throughout the evening Visual control was provided by GrindTV. They worked real hard getting it all set up in time but in the end it looked wicked. One visual wall that had live mixed visuals projected on to it coupled with about 10 TV's all screening different shit looked absolutely amazing. Plenty of eye candy to keep one transfixed.

While all this was going on downstairs, upstairs there was a completely different party. A dark sweaty little box that had the drum 'n' bass flavas runnin' all night. Pixie started up choosing to take it to the darker side. Which was quite appropriate as the room was so crazy that at some points you could not even see 10cm in front of you.

Mr Conspiracy managed to rock it as well I thought but after his set he whinged a little about the sound system. Geoff proceeded to then turn it up to it's potential quite too James dismay. Missed Dions set but from what I heard he kept it as hard and dark as usually expected of him. Sean turned up with MC P. Guist in tow for his 3.30am set. Which was great, Seans wickedly seamless mixing coupled with Pora's cool rhymes kept the room packed well late.

Grasshopper finished it all off playing till about 6.30am when we shut the room down and started the pack down.

Thank you all who made the party and CD possible you are all fabulous.

Big fat props and shout outs too Hedonism, Kog Transmissions, Obscure, Quinn Audio, Reflex Lighting, GrindTV, Leon, Welly Drum 'n' Bass Massive, Silver and Bollard, Red Bull, Isolate Graphic Design, Typography by Design, Thames, Jeremy Goer, 40oz, Flipside, Rex Royale, Tandy's, Active89FM ,the Grind Crew, all the DJ's and Live Acts, the crowd who kept both dancefloors packed and anybody else who contributed anything at all, Peace.