Last Saturday was Kazouday, and all of you probably still remember I wasn't too happy about a certain lineup... Well, let me start with a positive note: Squadra Bossa feat Buscemi was great! Absolutely fan-f*cking-tastic! If you ever have a chance to see them, go! You wont' regret it!
Another positive thing, the group before Buscemi, some kind of coverband called The Bastards, I only heard the last few songs of them, but from what I heard they were pretty good as well. I arrived rather late because of work I still needed to finish for my thesis, that's why I missed most of them, too bad.
So far for the good news. On to the dj's. Between The Bastards and Buscemi there was about an hour that needed to be filled. I saw a dj duo standing behind the decks, that same duo was also presenting the whole show that evening. Too bad I nearly never had seen them before on a Kazou event. That's one assumption come true. I still gave them some credit, for two reasons: the previous Kazou event I was dj-ing one of them came up to me, and we had some chit-chat about dj gear, he was claiming to have a setup at home as well, and because one of my friends claimed they were good. After about three or four songs I heard enough.
After Buscemi there was some more party planned, but it didn't start before the new dj's were announced. Four dj's, for a party that only had to last about two more hours, that's what was announced to my disbelief. That's half an hour for every dj. To give you some kind of comparison: when I'm spinning at home and I'm really feeling it, one and a half hour goes by in a jiffy. So half an hour means nothing, really.
First dj starts. I know the guy, he spinned at parties in the other part of Kazou (yeah, there's 2 parts of it actually). From what I heard, he knows how to beatmatch, not really tight, but more than enough to make a transition. His set has a defined flow, he has the crowd going, so to be honest I could whine, but it wouldn't be much justified.
Half an hour goes by, this guy stops his set, I see the same two come on stage as between The Bastards and Buscemi, but they got reinforced by a third one. So actually, it only were two dj's, but one of them was made up by a trio, and took as much time as three dj's would have. Kinda selfish methinks. But I'm just getting started. The first transition, completely utterly trainwrecked. For those of you that don't know the meaning of trainwreck, do this: make sure you can play two songs at the same time, let's say open Itunes and Windows Media Player. Pick a different song for each player. Start one of them, let it play, and when it's nearly finished, let's say 20 seconds left, start the other one. Now you're hearing a nice trainwreck. I think you get the picture.
To sum things up, more than half of their transitions were just fadermixes, fade one song out and another in, anyone can do this. The few attempts at beatmatching sometimes worked, but other times didn't work at all. For technique, they would fail a test miserably. But most of you probably know that good technique isn't everything a dj needs, a dj also, and even more so needs good track choice.
I can be very short about this: there was no flow going in the set, it seemed they were just randomly picking songs that would work the crowd well. I heard several songs come by a second time, and sometimes even a third time. They were a trio, and to me it seemed like they had only prepared one and a half to two hours for the whole evening, if they even prepared at all... I know I can fill two hours without any problem and without repeating any song played by me or a previous dj. If I put some more preparation in it I could lengthen this time for sure. Apparently they couldn't, or they didn't bother. Luckily for them, the crowd didn't seem to bother that much, but still, they announced themselves with a lot of show, and to me it was only dissappointing...
I was prepared to give them a chance, but not like this...
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