Okay, I was hoping somebody would have brought this up already so that I wouldnt have to- but as nobody has really tackled it, and I think it needs some attention:
Was anyone else disappointed with mr hawtins set to close the demf? I cant speak on the entire performance because I left after the first hour out of boredom, but that was some of the most boring 4ontheFloor 909 stuff I've heard in a while. I dont remember a single bassline in any of the tracks. Most of the synth stuff from the vinyl got buried under the 909 kick/snare/hihat/ride -which i believe someone did mention briefly as perhaps a fault of the sound engineer. The builds and snare rolls were cheesy and formulated crowd pleasers and I think even the crowd was getting bored of them after the first five or six. Now I hate badmouthing mr hawtin, as i have heard and seen him do plenty of great things for the music community, and I have enjoyed a handful of his sets via detroit parties around '94-95. It was even quite impressive watching him juggle all his stuff at demf and do 909 programming on the fly, but the outcome just seemed pretty boring. Not even any of those trademark plastikman funky rimshot rhythms. just kick,snare,hihat,ride- w/ very little variety in the different beats. Perhaps I am missing something conceptually behind this 'cause I dont really know anything about his ideas for doing the decks/efx/909 thing, and I may be overlooking some fundamental part to this stuff- I've never been too into the bangin' 4ontheFloor stuff as much anyways- so perhaps I'm not the best critic of it. I think just after hearing a lot of great music from derrick w/ plenty of soul and tribally rhythm stuff going on, the 909 just couldn't follow it up for me. comments please... -p
