Review: Israliens 2006 at The Coronet, London

[Genesis]

This is London.
This is the bedrock of EDM when the Dutch got close enough to bring up eurodance.
This is the healthiest clubbing scene on the planet when others failed to marginally match it up.
This is where Turntables saw light.
This is where nightclubs were born.
This is the city that never sleeps.
This is the city with a nightclub in every street of its town.
This is the dungeon of EDM where mainstream is ruining our beautiful music.
This is the pure sound of the underground.
The sound of light years ahead in dance music.
The sound of the future of EDM.
This is London, and on Saturday the 20th, it had yet another encounter with Psytrance.

The infamous Avi Shamilov (Astrix) is no stranger on the psy scene nor from the English clubland, and where his visit last November ruthlessly pounded South London's The Fridge in Brixton, his visit this May had more in its folds: May the 19th marked Astrix' first ever gig in a world-known superclub along with John 00 Fleming (Head of JooF Recordings), John Phantasm (Head of Phantasm Records), and Eskimo (John's son, Junya). The gig was thrown in the well-known midland club of Slinky in Birmingham. Twenty four hours later, Astrix was due to perform live (alas, a commonly used word nowadays with least knowledge of its true meaning) in The Coronet in Elephant & Castle, London with a handful of Israeli live acts and HOMmega boss, Eyal Yankovich. Along with Oforia, Dali, and Xero & Illumination, Astrix blasted the 3-story theater at yet another Antiworld successful event.

May the 20th was Israliens 2006.


Saturday morning was another normal day for me at work. Starting at 7:30, I was supposed to get off at 15:30 but a quick arrangement with my fellow supervisor ended with my handing the shift over to her at 14:20 for I had a flight to catch. I was in Dublin's airport at 18:00 sharp and easily made my way in the airport that I know every corner of by now and could go round it blindfolded given how often I've been there and how many times I've taken this flight. The craft took off at 19:30 (15 minutes delay) and were delayed for another 15 minutes over London's Heathrow because of its delay on the Irish lands: Heathrow is the 2nd busiest airport in Europe (a craft taking off/landing every 45 seconds), and for a craft to land at Heathrow it'll need to book a touchdown time that it should meet beforehand (apparently, the delay on the Irish soil send the craft beyond its expected touchdown time - talk about inpunctuality!). Finally, I took the underground from Heathrow and straight to Gloucester Road avoiding the District Line and an unecessary journey to Nottinghill Gate.
I quickly dropped my backpack that had no more than a phone charger, camera charger, tooth brush, a biege shirt and black tracksuit, 3 bars of chocolate, headphone and player spining J00F's last Global Trance Groove episode (new Wizzy Noise in there by the way!), some unfinished paper work from my last shift that I came round on during my flight, Ruth Rendel's book Thirteen Steps Down (don't you ever buy it Reemze: it's terrible!), and the Cyborgs book that I'm so late in finishing for that university essay. I then swapped my phone number from Irish to UK and phoned up Angelo that will be waiting for me at Elephant & Castle's Underground Station, and had my very quick dinner. Picked up the keys, apologized for my rush, threw my coat and boots on, and out of the door to some station on the District Line where I changed for the Bakerloo Line then down to Elephant & Castle where the tube terminates.
Angelo was at the station's gate munching a fish and chips wrap and after a quick hug, he treated me with a Red Bull as a sign of love and caring that I hugely valued at that point of the day.(details added because my mates will be reading this)

We were at The Coronet at 23:30 and I was afraid I missed out on a pretty good warm-up. I soon realized that I didn't after checking the line-up performance times printed out on one of the theater's walls. I had my quick usual tour around this new venue to be added to my list of venues that I've been to and despite the similarity of its layout and design with The Fridge, Stanford Rex, and even Brixton Academy: it's always lovely to be on the 2nd floor looking down at the vibrating dancefloor.
The Coronet starts off with stairs that leads to the 1st floor where the Techno and Hard Trance Room of a few hundreds capacity lays in complete isolation from the main room on the ground level beneath, two cloakrooms at the stair flights, and The Clockwork Prism Room is on the third floor with an entrance to the circle.
Kide was warming up the 3-story theater with some kick-arse minimal progressive that then turned into hard-edged progpsy that, though not perfectly my type of progressive, didn't fail to grab my ears to his mixing skills. Kide was clearly enjoying himself behind the MKIIs up until his departure from the deck at 12 sharp with a round of plause from the dancefloor that started looking more of a bee hive with only few hexagons to fill with nectar... A job of which Annelli perfectly finished.

Anneli is a new addition to my list of DJs and acts that I have seen so far. An undiscovered DJ for me has deserved her spot in the list of remarkable DJs pulling an exquisit psy set that is as equal in its excellency to any other set by any other more well-known DJ. The Swedish blonde started off with a bit of pumpy laid-back psy that soon moved on to techy full on never failing to sweep everybody off their feet. The dancefloor was packed at nearly 12:20 and that was when the rising riffs of Psycraft - Computech started fading in. The better side of the dancefloor flipped off when Psycraft was followed by MFG - Positive Energy, Xerox & Illumination - Battleship, the bangy remix from Timelock of Infected Mushroom's Cities of the Future and beautifully finished by a Wizzy Noise Bootleg for Juno Reactor - God is Universe, Electro Sun - High Cue, and Wizzy Noise again with Radio Silence. A dustless set by Anneli that I completely enjoyed from start to finish, never failed to buzz the dancefloor, and getting Oforia stand motionless watching some of the best mixing skills getting easily mastered by what looked like a new arrival to the scene. Little did he know that the woman was as good as everybody expected. Oforia started setting up his laptop at about 12:50, and with a quick sound check with the now very familiar head sound engineer, was ready to take over. Music off, lights on, cheers and applauds to Anneli, and off she goes.

BNEs Records' Oforia was launching his new album, Inner Twist what was plenty of an exciting wait to listen to all what Ofer Dikovsky had been working on for the past months. Starting with what seemed more or less of a 'set the mood tune' turned out to be a guitar packed full-on bomb for at that point that mood has been set, the floor have been packed, and the doors have been locked: at that point, there's no way back... just like there isn't a way out of a psychedelic experience, just like it's that night that gets you trapped in, just like that loud aggressive punching beat slamming the corners of your skull. Oforia stood out to the producer that he is and lightly moved between the korgs, his laptop and that 'thing' that is more than just a big board with so many channels, synths, and buttons all over the place. Despite the absence of a guitarist (or a guitar for that matter), Oforia still managed to play pre-recorded midi samples to blend in with his tunes. Known for his melodic influences and quite tweaky breakddowns, Ofer performed some of his tunes from his 2005 album: Headed for Infinity such as Northern Lights, Machines Job, Substance, and the growlingly mad Anti Gravity. With plenty of good stuff from his new album, Infected Mushroom's home label is surely to have made a wise decision signing yet another Israeli to their pack of artists that promises high standards and lethal levels of satisfaction. As for us on the dancefloor, things were getting filthier and totally out of control and we were even more flamed by the view of Astrix and Eyal Yankovich at the back: Eyal being the lazy slow moving slug that he is, and Avi equally splitting his time between chatting to his boss Eyal and noding head to Oforia's untolerable pumping pieces of that twisted psy: it was techy, it was dirty, it was loud... it was exquisite!

Astrix is in no need for any introductions of any sort for the HOMmega 23-year-old have taken the scene by storm a few years ago at the age of 19 and is today one of the biggest yet controversial names on the psy scene. After a few disappointing releases such as Follow Me, Closer to Heaven, and Tel Aviv, Avi picked things up a bit with his collaboration with J00F in bringing 3rd Time Lucky to life. Despite the inevitability and the almost deja vu feeling that I had of an excellent set coming up and all the twists and turns of a live performance, I decided to put his few horrid tunes aside and pretend not to know a blooming thing of the colourful discography of this chap either and tried to set my mind on a neutral mode and murmered to myself: ''You're the top solo act on the psy scene.... Impress me.''

And he bloody did.

Starting off with a lovely dirty live version of Follow Me, Avi picked up where Oforia dropped off with a blistering mentally twisted high pitched act of Infected Mushroom's remix of Coolio. Getting to the breakdown of the tune and keeping the melody drifting on its own, Avi slid a piercing uplifting beat that kept on rising and rising to deliver that forthcoming orgasmic feeling of the loudest madest sound to ever echo your ears, and just when it's supposed to kick in, he holds it back. Stop. Rise again, but shorter, getting there. Stop. Again yet shorter. Stop. Hands up, full lungs from a full dancefloor: 'Come on!' Despite our incredible enjoyment and that amazing feeling of unpredectablility, we were itching for it, and it itched so bad that the longer we waited, the better it'll sound when it kicks in: one last time, and there it was: bluey grey lights, pounding beats like none we've ever heard, cheers, stomps, mental wastage. It is simply impossible to describe that moment of the set and when I thought it can't get better: it did. Soon after finishing Coolio and following it up with his remix of Dali - Colours and towards the end of Tweaky, a rising riff identified the next tune as nothing but the unmistakable beauty of psytrance, nothing but the unmatched perfection of EDM, nothing but a timeless gem that will never grow out of psy playlists, that should never leave dancefloors no matter what, that will remain that sublime precious perfection in the collision of two worlds: full-on psy versus hard-edged progressive, Astrix vs. John 00 Fleming (aka Gen's god) and their groundbreaking 3rd Time Lucky!
With the gem fully kicking it, and with no need to mention the perfect lay out of this infamous tune, Avi made things even spicier with a faster beat that got nothing in return from me but a few seconds of motionless amazement. A few seconds that felt like ages to absorb what he did to that tune and try to decode what in demons' world did he just do? I wanted to dance... Dance like never before, but I really needed those two never-ending seconds to pick things up though I was with in complete synergy with the tempo of the whole set up till this point. To bring this short yet long moment to an end, this never ending little detail that I could never give a fair describtion of or enough time for: Astrix was brutally hammering 3rd Time Lucky at an unprecedented 160 bpm (Yes I'm sad and I counted them). Do you know what a 160 bpm can do to your brain? Can you even imagine how long would it take you to recover a 160 bpm with whatever psy elements are drifting with it? I felt like wanting to capture this moment somehow, to put that feeling in a wee box and hide it somewhere where nobody could find... That moment for me was Pandora's Box.
A quick look at Astrix' face with the pounding tune drifting louder than ever: eyes closed, biten lower lip, and smacking right fist, and a left arm at work. The amount of energy on the dancefloor was just massive and if it was to be a physical matter it'd errupt out of the dome of the theater pulling the deepest roots of every living and dead thing in London. Eyes shut, fists pulled, nodding head, and stomping feet was all what I was for the next 7-or-so minutes... I literally felt the ribs of my chest cage vibrating. Upon finishing that very short journey, I subconsciously pulled out my mobile and texted Dion a trans-contitental short report of what I just lived in the heat of that moment. A short text that was less than an absolute particle to what I just lived.

With everybody in a devastatingly pleasurable state of mind, two girls lost the plot and went up the stage. Speakers are the main attraction at a party and with total ignorance to that 8-foot tall speaker: the two girls danced at the huge growling mad black monster's throne for the next hour connecting Astrix' spotless performance to the Xerox & Illumination mental quake (photo can be found in the photos' topic). Yes, two girls from us the party people and not ''gogo girls'' (whatever the fuck 'gogo' means). We don't need women with flashy knickers and undies to pull a show, we don't need a fireshow and jugglers all over the place: this is our party, we dance for it. Snobby as this will sound: we're too good to have someone dancing for us, someone with dancing as a profession, someone who might not even have a belonging to EDM. This is our party, this is our rules, and we need nobody putting it for us or doing the job for us. This is our drawing and we can paint it as we wish... This is our temple and that's how we worship our music... We need no one doing it for us.

Xerox & Illumination are on my list of outstanding production and excellent perfomance for I have seen the HOMmega duo before in top shape. Only that once was before their album XI saw light and before its gems stole whatever lights laid down on psy last year. With a pack of unreleased & released tunes Moshe Keinan and Amir Dvir plouged their way through whatever sanity was left from Astrix' set. I was wrecked, but I had to see Xerox & Illumniation for they are among my must-see live acts especially after that ground breaking album of theirs and more precisely, after that monstrous tune of theirs: Night Shift. If there was a single reason for me to stay for X&I's set, I wouldn't find one that matches the beauty of performing Night Shift. Where that tune is a personal favorite of mine and not necessarily a massive tune for whomever gave it a listen (Fat Sam & Dion on top of my mind right now), listening to it in its mad drifting sound live is simply unmatched. Moshe & Amir hammered the beauty after a new unreleased tune that they threw at us and just when the features of the masterpiece cleared up with its intro and 4/4 beats, those growling kicks and its fast rising tension, the better side of the dance floor was pumping up despite the exhaustion that Astrix' set have caused. Xerox & Illumination was absolutely brilliant and followed up by Dali and Eyal Yankovich: the last 3 hours were out of this world, and just as Astrix ripped pur brains out, Xerox & Illumination managed to knock out all the sanity leftovers.
If there's one way to finish this it'd be by quoting what I part of what I texted to Dion at that night:

Too much, but never enough.

[Shy--Ism]

You Watched Xerox & Illumination !! You were listening to Their Breath-Taking set while I am stuck In Here !

How Much Lucky You Are ! ... *cough* Blessed *cough*

Glad you had a Blast Genesis , Thank you so much for your review , enjoyed reading it , felt like being there instead of you !

London Shined with Psychedelic Last Saturday Night !

[DIONYSOS]

[psychogenesis]

[PsyleNce]

[Proof]

Was I smiling when I read this review? ... You betcha!

Not only was I smiling because it was an incredible review, it was more of a 'smirk'. Why? Because I happened to know everything you were talking about, almost 6/10 of the tracks you mentioned ... I've heard before. Can't believe you didn't think of me when Nightshift was playing . It was in a GTG set that we both were listening to and once that tune kicked in ... all i could say was "Bang bang swift BANG!" ... and you go "you like it?" ... me: "FACK YEA".

I'm glad we've got more female DJ's in the scene as well ... so i'm guessing Dali wont be lonely anymore .

Thnx Gen ... p.s: There might be a chance I might drop by London next summer ... so keep you schedule clear just in case.

[s u h a]

[Genesis]

[Proof]

Next year, not this year shmuck.