TREATMENT
clubs
2 BAD MICE
Big Fish Little Fish @ Tramshed, Cardiff Sun 16 Oct Get ready for a serious rave experience, featuring hardcore legends 2 Bad Mice and a multi-sensory dancefloor complete with bubbles and glitter cannons. The only thing is, unattended adults won’t be allowed. This is Big Fish Little Fish, a rave for little people and their families, founded in London and brought to Wales with the help of Super Furry Animals guitarist Huw Bunford. Hannah, whose idea this was, has such a strong belief in the health properties and fun of raving that she wanted to give the experience to the youngest members of her family, drawing on the crew’s experience as longtime clubbers and parents too. The Tramshed restaurant and bars will be open, and there will be crafts, play area, babies-only safe space with toys, parachute dancing, transfer tattoos, workshops, and safe sound levels. Appropriately named after a Beatrix Potter story, 2 Bad Mice are no throwaway party DJs. Their seminal track Bombscare came out in 1991, and was a powerful influence on jungle with its explosive samples, scratch effects, sped-up hip hop breakbeats. It was a classic at Cardiff’s Hippo Club back in the day. I’m too young to remember, but that’s nothing compared to most of the crowd at this dance. Open to parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts or carers, this is the one rave where sucking on a dummy is OK. Tickets: £7.50/pre-walkers free. Info: 029 2023 5555 (GTDC) BUZZ 42
Y Plas, Cardiff University Students Union Fri 14 Oct
You can tell the summer’s over when lineups like this materialise, in order to satisfy the appetite of the returning horde of students. The lineup at this event will please a much wider demographic than just Cardiff’s young undergraduates as the promoters abandon the cheaper thrills of tech-house and ‘bass music’ that the night is known for, instead showcasing a more mature billing of five DJs who should provide a more eclectic and unpredictable soundtrack. The biggest draw for the masses will be a DJ set by Simian Mobile Disco [pictured]: two refugees from the nu-rave days, previous members of the band Simian who found even greater renown when they dumped the guitars. In the last few years they’ve switched their raunchy, hooky electrohouse style for a more up-to-date house party soundtrack of techno, minimal in approach yet grandiose in feeling. This shift in gear was surely inspired by their fellow headliners here, Âme, a German pair who reshaped minimal techno with Berlin/Ibiza hits like 2003’s Rej. Also appearing is another German, Gerd Janson, who came to Cardiff in the spring for Delete’s sixth birthday. He’s a surefire hit on the dancefloor, equally at home playing littleknown 80s boogie as he is militant techno and rough-edged house. Joining the dots, the next headliner on this generous lineup is Leon Vynehall, whose second album came out on Janson’s acclaimed record label, Running Back. A house producer hailing from Brighton, his beautifully crafted tracks quickly took him to the pinnacle the scene with other releases on magisterial labels like Rush Hour and Clone’s Royal Oak imprint. Marquis Hawkes completes the list of headliners. The Berlin-based Londoner, who used to be a fixture at west Wales free parties, once put out hard techno tracks, under his given name Mark Hawkins, on the influential Dutch techno label Djax-Up-Beats and others. His new alias has refreshed his style for today’s scene – just like Treatment, it seems. Tickets: £17/£15.50. Info: 029 2078 1458 GWYN THOMAS DE CHROUSTCHOFF
BLACK HOUSE
Aberystwyth Students Union Sat 8 Oct Aber’s main club promoters return for One, a big return-to-uni night in the Student Union with some high ranking names from the world of UK hip-hop and drum’n’bass. Hospital Records takes control of the main stage with one of its original artists, Danny Byrd [pictured]. By his side on the night are comparative youngbloods Fred V & Grafix, whose new album Oxygen dropped this summer. They’re definitely representing the new school of liquid, beating Danny Byrd at his own game – laserblast synths and strings that buzz behind soulful vocals and thwacking beats, with emotionally charged breakdowns. Also appearing is another of Hospital’s younger generation, Krakota – though he’s less well known than the poppier producers mentioned above, his style is more effective, with a harder edge but a formidable control of the soulful melodies that define the label’s sound. MC Ruthless, one of the Hospital stalwarts and a frontman for Jungle Drummer vs DJ Fu, will be the hypeman on the main stage. Finally, on the vocal tip, Black House have got a rising star of the hip-hop scene this side of the Pacific, in the form of Ocean Wisdom. Signed to the UK’s most prominent current hip-hop label, High Focus, his debut album hit number 10 in the UK iTunes album charts. Not only that, he’s officially one of the fastest rappers in the world. Tickets: £20/£15. Info: 01970 621700 (GTDC)
GENERAL LEVY
Monkey Bar, Swansea Fri 7 Oct “This could turn Hare Krishna into a badboy.” General Levy should have a special place in the heart of Welsh ravers since his collaboration with M-Beat, Incredible, soundtracked that classic jungle scene from Human Traffic, shot in Cardiff’s now defunct Catapult Records. It’s seemingly Wales’ second city that is showing him love though, with his second Swansea appearance this year. That tune was actually the first jungle track to chart in the UK Top 10, so this is undeniably an important guy. Coming up in London’s West Indian, Asian and Africa communities, General Levy was raised on soul, ska, hip-hop and calypso. From the age of 14 he formed a soundsystem crew and was throwing parties in the city, and his first reggae record came out in 1989. He started out as a ‘deejay’ in the Jamaican sense of the word, meaning that he provides a vocal for instrumental tracks, rather than being a selector, which was what they call DJs in Jamaica – got it? He went on to release raga, hip-hop and dancehall for Tim Westwood’s Justice Records and others in the early 90s, sometimes in collaboration with Capleton – even knocking out a pure fire dancehall flip of Phil Collins at one point. In the years since being claimed by the jungle scene, General Levy has worked with the likes of Sly & Robbie, Shaggy, Steely & Clevie and Artful Dodger. Tickets: £8. Info: 01792 480822 (GTDC)
MOODYMANN
Just Jack @ Tramshed, Cardiff Fri 7 Oct Moodymann aka Kenny Dixon Jr is one of those Detroit artists who, like Theo Parrish, seems to have some kind of purity and magic that cannot be appropriated. With an innate skill in sampling and grooves, his music explicitly reveals the DNA of Detroit music, from Motown to hip-hop and beyond into house and techno. He’s also part of the 3 Chairs collective with Parrish and two other influential producers from the city, Marcellus Pittmann and Rick Wilhite. A shadowy and enigmatic figure, Dixon Jr alternates between reclusion and bravado, sometimes hiding away and sometimes shouting into the microphone during his sets. His incredibly emotive and powerfully rhythmic house, techno and hip-hop combines a genuine jazz mindset with potent melodic flourishes and deeply-dug soul and funk samples. Like Parrish though, he’s just as renowned, if not more so, for his unique style of DJing, playing music from all over the spectrum of groove music from the last few decades with eccentricity and dynamism. Due to Tramshed’s lack of a proper late license this night finishes at midnight, but after-parties are promised. Even so, this night comes highly recommended – the opportunity to see Moodymann in Wales doesn’t appear very often. The last time he came to town, alongside Joey Negro, was almost 10 years ago. Tickets: £15/£12. Info: 029 2023 5555 (GTDC)