Sets!
I love sets!
Here are some of my favorite sets and why you should check them out. be forewarned, almost all of these are EDM because I derive more pleasure from longform EDM then lets say longform singer songwriter.
I also want to say to any cucks who go “erm most of these are boiler rooms” yea they are; i’m sorry that I’m not trying to direct someone to a 720rip of a deep techno set from a basement in 2015 Belarus1. These are only some of my favorite sets. I’m putting accessibility and ease of access at the forefront. If you want to talk to me about some hidden gems by all means go ahead, I love talking about music. But Boiler Room is simply one of the best places to find good quality sets on the internet.
these are in no particular order but my very favorite is all the way at the end
first up:
Minna-no-kimochi Boiler Room Tokyo: Tohji Presents u-ha
…PLEASE GIVE IT UP FOR MINNA-NO-KIMOCHIIIIIIIIIIIII LETS GO LETS GO
Despite their reputation as mysterious trance music icons Minna-no-kimochi are no strangers to baring it all. This is mostly in reference to them somehow ending up shirtless in every one of their sets, even this one where they’re literally alone in a room together. Truly inspirational.
One of the truly amazing things about Minna-no-kimochi is that they’re two people working the same deck2. DJing is contrary to popular belief; hard, the level that Minna-no-kimochi is DJing at is even harder. Two people working the same deck at that level of skill, coordination, and ferocity is just as impressive as the music is. Rapturous is what the music is. Trance has the opportunity of being one of the most prone to boredom, it’s recurring melodies which are intended to worm their way inside your ears can just as often fall flat against them. Minna-no-kimochi are an exception. I haven’t heard a single dull moment in any of the hour upon hours of sets I’ve listened to of theirs. It is my firm belief that the greatest sets of all time tell a story. Minna-no-kimochi are Tolkien-esque, you see the real appeal of Tolkien to me is not in his narratives but in his stockpiling of a recurring spectacular vibe that he dishes out throughout his writing. Remember Tom Bombadil? Me too. Minna-no-kimochi excel at keeping things fresh, there are peaks and lulls and times where the music washes over you like waves, times when it feels like the sun is finally breaking through a sky of clouds. The music is epic. Not in the #epic way but in the ballads of yore way. If Beowulf had youtube he would listen to the Minna-no-kimochi boiler room set.
You should too. It’s enthralling, it starts out with everyone’s favorite pop girly’s favorite white boy AG Cook. XXOPLEX BANGS IT FUCKING BANGS IT BANGS SO HARD. IT THRASHES IT DEFIES REASON AND IT’S JUST THE FIRST TRACK.
One of the tricky things about DJing is that at some point you’re working with someone elses music. It means that someone out there’s heard this track before, you’ve got expectations to beat. It means that throwing a familiar one in the mix is just as likely to elicit groans as it is to elicit cheers. In the first minute of the set not only do they open with XXOPLEX they immediately follow it up with an edit of Mike Posner’s Please Don’t Go. And it’s good. Holy fuck dear reader. Holy fuck. As much as I want to give you a play by play of the entire set I can’t. The energy is tops the music is tops the people are tops and the lads take their shirts off at 13:00.
nasthug | Boiler Room Tokyo: Tohji Presents u-ha
The most recent addition to my favorite sets, Nasthug’s boiler room set is a lot of those things. on the top of that list is a combination of irreverent, charming, talent and creativity. She goes from Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun to Young Thugs Surf, that’s just one of the tamer examples, Spongebob’s theme makes an appearence. One of the greatest skills a DJ can have is taking something from far out in left field and making you listen to it with an open ear. There aren’t many DJs who can do what Nasthug does in this set and walk away with their dignity intact. She does that over and over again. She gets it. She knows ball. The mashups she’s mashing seem like they shouldn’t work, but they do they do they do. They’re cunt. The set is cunt. Because this set is so fresh in my memory I don’t have as much to say but I just absolutely adore her energy and the energy of the two people next to her. This set is just so much fun.
Masayoshi Takanaka - SUPER LIVE 2012
An hour and fourty nine minutes of Masayoshi Takanaka absolutely laying it down. Now there are things I don’t like in this set. He sings a couple of his songs with heavily vocoded vocals and I don’t really dig the daft punk esque feel, some songs feel redundant and I mean this is the guy who made Rainbow Goblins, I could be listening to one of his Rainbow Goblin sets!. So why this one. SUPER LIVE 2012 has two main things going for it, it’s length3 and it’s absolutely disgusting amount of sauce. There are bits aplenty, the whole set starts with waves lapping a shore, a couple songs after the song ends with it falling apart the different instruments lagging behind then catching up then ultimately tapping out till it’s just one lead guitar, then that one falters. It’s gorgeous. Oh my god is it gorgeous. Another thing I find drawing me to SUPER LIVE 2012 is that because it’s a bit later in Takanakas career he’s kind of leaning heavier into the jam band aspects of his performance. It’s always been there, but him getting older means that he can’t belt out songs like he used to - the vocoder is proof of that much. To make up for it he plays for nearly two hours uninterrupted, he goes through every era of his music and he rocks all of them to the ground with a transcendent kind of groove. The song’s flow so gorgeously into one another and the band plays like maniacs. Another thing4 I love about this set is that band. They’ve been playing with Takanaka for a while now, and they are a well oiled machine, everyone knows there place and everyone has a solo and everyone is smiling and the crowd is dancing and it’s just splendid. Next time you’re trying to listen to something in the background that soon turns to foreground, put this one on.
Fred again.. | Boiler Room: London
This is THE Fred Again set for a reason.5 There’s something transcendent about a Fred concert that I really can’t explain, I’ve only been to one but it was this insane communal more then music kind of experience and I left feeling like a better person. That’s kind of spoiled his festival and concert sets for me. Fred Again..’s Boiler Room set is just as good as his festival/concert sets, it just holds less emotional oomf. The Boiler Room set has a different kind of oomf.
sold out US tour, sold out European tour, Coachella? Smashed it! Whaat!
I love the way that DJs are introduced. This is one of my favorite DJ introductions ever. If you don’t know anything about Fred or DJs one of the things that’s set fred apart is that he’s mixing it all in front of you, he’s got the drum pad he’s got the piano6 he’s got the boards, he’s not just playing the songs he’s riffing over them he’s doing the edm equivalent of scatting, in addition to being an absolute madman he’s classically trained and was mentored by the one the only Brian Eno, yknow the guy who produced nearly everything for 20 years7.
The Boiler Room set is grimier, he’s into it, he doesn’t get to go off like this often, he’s soaked in sweat, he hardly says a word, he’s dialed in, disgustingly so, he’s off the damn chain. One of my favorite things about sets is that they’re not just an audio experience, they’re also a video one. The visual side of a set is never the thing that makes the set, you can’t save a shitty set with good visuals. This isn’t a shitty set, and these aren’t shitty visuals. You’re seeing Fred bent over the deck playing in a rapturous state of mind but better then that you’ve got characters. The best sets have characters, some slip in and out making their presences known only to observant eyes, some are recurring characters, some are mainstays, some are archetypes. One guy in freds set accidently bumps the deck with his elbow as he dances and for a couple of seconds silence. Fred only smiles and gives him a quick hug and starts it back up, it’s not even an issue, there’s phone guy who’s recording nearly everything but whenever he’s not he’s dancing. There’s the guy with the flask of something, the girl who looks like she doesn’t know what’s going on, there’s posers aplenty but for every poser there’s at least two who get it. There’s a lot to get it. It bangs. It’s really good. It’s widely acclaimed for a reason, it’s got good flow and good story and amazing music and amazing music and good characters and good people and it’s got dancing and it feels so so good.
I’ll admit, I’m an elitist, I get wilt when someone says I love EDM and puts on pop EDM, I hate Diplo, I’ve seen him live I deserve to hate him. There are a lot of good DJs out there today. It just feels like there’s also a lot of frauds out there. Fred has beaten all the Fraud allegations time and time again. Is he becoming more mainstream then ever before? Yes. Does that means I’m gonna jump off the train because I value my esoteric self aggrandizing music taste? No. It’s never that serious. I’m the least serious elitist you’ll ever meet. If you enjoy something I’m happy. You should go enjoy this set now. My favorite moment is probably around 32:00 but then again that’s the part I’m listening to right now and if you ask me in 10 minutes my favorite moment will be 42:00
Now let’s talk about my favorite set ever. Bar none.
Jersey - we play music until someone breaks our synths
this set has been played probably over a hundred times by me. The French house music duo8 rip through all 27 minutes. Are they industry plants? I don’t know or care.
The music is enough to prove that even if they are they’ve got chops on chops on chops. House music is really good when it’s good. When house music is great it’s the best9. I have so many favorite things about this set, the music is obviously awesome, the DJ’s look straight out of a cartoon, one nondescript and the other with dyed hair with the roots so grown out that when his head shakes in frantic enthusiasm that it looks like yellow curtains. They look unrefined, unhampered by clout or obligation to anything other then playing an amazing set. The set takes place in a living room, all the furniture cleared out so some 50 odd people can cram their way into it. There are so many characters, there are so many story lines. There’s Vaseline Man10, Satan in a Safety Jacket11, The Fool, Dancing Girl. Lamp Guy12, and from the back of the room standing on a chair or a table a man in a Daft Punk hoodie stands rocking back and forth.; As if the patrons saints of house visited the party themselves. I have told stories about this set, because there are stories to tell about it. It feels cohesive, visuals peak, music peak, set peak.
The DJs play on the same keyboard, going between drum pads and rigs and decks. If you look at any of there youtube shorts you’ll see that they make a lot of their decks themselves, Arduinos and raspberry pis aplenty. The music sounds like a throwback from the future, and they’re making it all themselves, the tracks are theirs and they’re mixing and playing and remixing on top of them and it’s just so good and dynamic. Another really nice thing is that you don’t see a single phone the entire set (yay). The music flows in an out and there are minute long builds and builds that are so inlaid that you don’t realize they’re there till your fourth listen. It’s rapturous. I love this set with all my heart. In such a way that I can describe but would never do so, it means too much to me to explain it instead of show it. LOTR fans will enjoy one particular part of this set but I will not spoil why.
i’ll come by and we’ll talk tonight
I can’t express what this set means to me. Albeit the fact that it may seem like I just did, all this enthusiasm wilts in comparison to my actual love for it. If there’s any set you check out, let it be this one. <3
if you got this far you probably care about sets and music so here are my honorable mentions or sets I just think are cool,
Daft Punk - Alive 2007: only in this category because if I talk about daft punk I’ll never shut up I love daft punk look i’ve already started and i really have so much to say about them for another essay oh god daft punk save me save me daft punk
ANNABEL STOP IT - HOUSE PARTY DJ SET lab54: i hope if i’m ever subjected to a house party that looks as scummy as this one ANNABEL is djing and she plays her Jack remix. she’s got so much passion for it all and despite the fact the crowd looks evil13 she’s thriving and enjoying herself so much. I love when it’s clear the DJ likes the music.
Fishmans - Long Season: Fishmans is kind of obvious to anyone who knows ball. And while I chose this link because it’s an actual live performance, you can find the entire 35 minute epic on spotify.
Kaytranada - Boiler Room Los Angeles DJ Set: this one is as good as Montreal I will not tell a fib. Holy crap!
Dishonorable Mention: Diplo, I fucking hate you dude.
for those interested in 2015 belarus deep techno
this is a running theme of my interests
It’s just within the limit for yt2mp3 (2 hours)
i could another thing this paragraph into infinity with how much i love this set
his most recent set is an hour and 45 minutes long and it might become my favorite fred set but it still needs to grow on me
in concert, not in this set
think Pharrell but when U2 was trending
bet you’ve never seen this combo before
a foundation in daft punk and a healthy dosage of adhd makes this subjective truth objective for a fellow like me
my personal favorite
who actually probably works for/with them because he’s shown up in their other sets as well
lamps have actually become a massive part of their brand which i think is hilarious and even if the whole set is staged I don’t care because it’s so good
in a very drunk benign way
That Fred Again boiler room set goes hard