Got back from Bloc yesterday with a head buzzing with things. I'll crosspost what I wrote on ninja about the weekend here with more on the last point to follow:

*loved* antipop consortium. set of the weekend for me. really tight and beautifully done. empty room mind. I think we had more people for agt.

highs:

Placid for kicking our weekend off good and proper and for playing probably the best actual tunes of the festie

AE for basically taking hardcore and sticking it through their algorithms and playing the resulting mess real, real loud. got proper lost in it.

Both of our sets, particularly Digitonal where I tested out a load of new stuff and really got off on it. AGT was great fun as well - started with an empty room and filled it in about 10 mins. great vibe in there - scrappy set by our standards, but the energy was tiptop.

Swimming pools, lazy rivers and general chillage with fine company.

Mixmaster Mike and the shoddy work. This was gloriously entertaining provided you weren't taking it too seriously. if your *thing* is to be a turntablist, then I kind of expect you to be able to bring a fucking beat in on time. and yet somehow he gets away with it by being able to hold the crowd, despite sub-student level skills on display (that said, when he gets it right, it was breathtaking). I suspect trying to do too much at once and not having a grasp of serato yet.

Fails:

Too much dubstep, by far. seriously, I've tried with it I really have but it's just so fucking boring.

Flying Lotus. Seriously didn't get that and I was way hyped for his set. We lasted about 7 or 8 minutes and then thought fuck that. Apparently there were sound problems.

The general, relentlessness of where dance music is right now...

Listen kids, noise is great. banging beats are great. dirty synths and filthy basslines...all good. but you need a bit of contrast to make it work. otherwise (and I realise I sound like my dad here), it really *is* just noise. you're all so busy trying to out fucking filth each other that forget to put in a tune and without that, my friend, it really gets pretty boring pretty quickly. Anyway, mho, naturally but I'm pretty sure that's why our set got such a passionate response.