One of the standout moments of 2012 was in early February. It was freezing cold and snowing on a Saturday night when I decided to take a trip into Manchester to a night called Selective Hearing. This was my first such trip to one of these events, although I had heard good things, the top of the bill was one Addison Groove, who I was desperate to see again after a storming set at a Swamp81 night in Cable in Oct 2011 (my favourite night of that year). Also on the bill were Randomer, who I knew pretty well from D&B releases on Med School and Hospital Records, and Objekt, a guy I had never seen before, though I had seen the name bandied about.
In earlier social media discussion, the Selective guys had said Objekt was coming straight from a big Techno event in Belgium and he would be bringing a bag of hard techno records with him. This displeased me as I had always stated a dislike of Techno music. In 2011 I had been swayed away from D&B by the styles of Swamp81 and similar labels but I still considered myself as a heavy bass fan (‘We’ll have no 4/4 here, thank you’). When Objekt started the first thing I noticed was he was using vinyl records alongside his Serato setup, which increased my respect right off the bat. I popped of some shots of him and settled back on the stage to check the sounds. It wasn’t long before my head was nodding intently and I started moving more and more. He was obviously mixing records but it was so seamless it sounded as one track, progressing and moving, increasing the energy levels of the crowd. It was maybe an hour or so into his 2 hour set when there was a breakdown in the music, as it built up again a heavy distorted kick drum pounded back into action and my hand leapt into the air. I had two immediate thoughts:
and that, as they say, is history. As it turned out Addison Groove was really late and I didn’t have time to see more than 5 minutes of his set, but that didn’t matter thanks to what had come before. Further into 2012 I revisited Selective Hearing many times, checking the sounds of Karenn, Akkord, Marcell Dettman and Levon Vincent (amongst many others). My musical tastes have broadened even more considerably and the spread of 130(ish) bpm music now dominates my listening time and nights out. I’ve still got the softest of spots for Jungle, but I’m glad I can spread myself further nowadays!