At midnight a small part of Homelands 2002 became forever Vienna.
During the preceding Jazzanova set the Gilles Peterson Worldwide arena was sadly deserted. But come the arrival of Vienna's finest chill merchants it was rammed.
Four hours were devoted to the K&D soundsystem and for the first quarter Dorfmeister took to the decks. It took two tunes for him to erupt the venue, and what's more just two bars of said tune. K&D's emotive remix of Bomb The Bass' 'Bug Powder Dust' is a glacial-funk explosion and the five years since it's inception have been kind to it. It still does damage.
Backed by wonderful visual projections by Fritz Fitzke, Dorfmeister took charge with some righteous riddims. His MC was a baffling sight. The festival program calls him MC Sugar B, but to look at he resembled a portly Turkish priest, resplendent in long white robe and extended chin beard.
He leapt around the stage, with a glass of wine in hand, performing bizarre almost-incantations. Oh my gosh, as other, perhaps saner MCs would say.
The highlight of the K&D session was the live set by hotshot producer Sterotyp. The Viennese riddim-maker fuses ragga with techno, broken beats with 2step to produce a very now sound. With caustic rim shot drums piercing the night air, the tracks sounded every part as deadly as on his forthcoming G-Stone album 'My Sound'.
The album features reggae vocalist Tikiman, who's best known for his work with the secretive Berlin techno-dub collective Basic Channel. But for a man affiliated with such a shy and retiring outfit, he has a very energetic stage presence. His heavy metal scissor kicks, minus the guitar obviously, needed to be seen to believed for their eccentricity.
For completely different reasons vocalist Cesar stuck out like a sore thumb. His R Kelly-style over embellished r'n'b croonings relegated this performance, just as he does on 'My Sound,' from exceptional to merely very good. 'Oh baby oh baby?' Not tonight luv.
But the tracks that featured Tikiman, in particular 'Fling Style' proved enchanting. Stereotyp: like your album says, you're dangerous. After which, in the K&D session, all that was required was for Peter Kruder to close the evening in fine style. Which, of course, he did.
