- There's always something better about seeing a DJ on the beach. Especially a west coast beach, which has the added bonus of a sunset over the ocean. Provide a DJ with this, and it's like giving an artist the best canvas on which to paint his work. But while Gilles Peterson may have painted a picture of artistic brilliance on the canvas which was the final sunset in Australia for 2008, he didn't play to his setting. Instead, his eclectic genius got in the way of a simple equation; beach party = beach tunes.
Don't get me wrong. Had his just-under-two-hour set been in a nightclub in any urban setting, it would have been fantastic. As you would expect from a DJ like Peterson, the set was a smorgasbord of genres involving Motown classics—Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"—and soul tunes—The Dells' "I Can Sing a Rainbow."
Also in Gilles' repertoire were some nu-jazz tracks, which he is of course famous for presenting, such as Reel People's "Alibi," 4Hero's remix of Nuyorican Soul's " I Am the Black Gold of the Sun" and Eliza Soares' "Mas Que Naddee." The late '90s Blue Boy hit "Remember Me" also got a jersey somewhere in the mix.
Photo credit: Steven Raman
Peterson, however, did not have the blessing of the sound gods this evening. Any heat generated from the warm up DJ quickly dissipated when the music cut out during Peterson's first track. To his credit, Gilles got the crowd going again from a cold start after ten minutes of silence. Thinking that the worst was over, Gilles must have been astounded when the sound cut out once again 30 minutes into his set. A lesser DJ would not have been able to come out of this, but Gilles' choice of tune to break the dead cold silence was a master stroke, Alice Russell's slow, chic cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." Not only did this track provide a warmth that only a familiar a cappella can create, but it was slow enough to form a sturdy foundation on which to build some momentum. It was almost as if the silence preceding this track was engineered by Gilles himself to give this tune its full effect.
We all know Gilles knows music. The nail on his pinkie knows the entire back catalogues of artists I have never even heard of, but maybe, on this occasion that knowledge and his desire to teach got the better of him. The set he spun would have been great if the punters wanted a music lesson. But this night, people were on the beach for New Year's Eve, looking for music ala Peterson's Giles Peterson in Brazil – Da Hora. When he did play tracks reminiscent of those nu-jazz Latino beats, the crowd went wild. It's a shame he didn't bother to play more of them.