- James Curd is someone who does need an introduction by name, but not by music. He is one half of the Greenskeepers, who, throughout 2002 made a massive impact on the house music community with their innovative and fresh approach to house music. Their heavy use of Big Band and Swing Jazz samples jettisoned house music in a fresh and fun direction through a sound which was embraced and exploited by the likes of Derrick Carter and Mark Farina.
Despite my enthusiasm to write about James’ set the excellent performances of Toasted residents Gav Fisher and Jaywalker should definitely be accounted for. Gav Fisher began the night with a very deep set of West Coast house – smooth bass-lines, cool, flavorsome congo drums and the occasional jazz injection made for a very appropriate set as people entered the Globe for a few quiet drinks before their nights got real crazy. Gav played a lot of very Halo, Hipp-E styled tunes and held a very nice balance of not pushing the night while keeping the interest of those present.
By midnight it was time for Jaywalker to jump on the decks. He followed on very nicely from Gav Fisher. He kept the sounds deep, and over his first three tracks began drawing people to the dancefloor. He built up the jazzier style the night was bound to take and a few tracks in even began dropping some more upbeat party tracks like the Track Yanker’s “Good Ol” which really started pulling the masses to their feet. Jaywalker kept building the dancefloor and only half an hour into his set, had the Globe bumpin’ away to some quality house tunes. His set also featured tracks from Landshark (Lance DeSardi), Inland Knights and even had the seminal Greenskeepers tune played moments before James – “bang in your face”. At this point in time Jaywalker had done an exceptional job in commanding the dancefloor’s attention and keeping all 10 pins up for James Curd to knock down.
And damn did he knock ‘em down!
From his first mix he had the crowd in the palm of his hands. Dancing away behind the decks, banging his head to swing-house tracks and generally going nuts while mixing up a storm. For everyone out for a dance in the place, he just looking like a DJ getting into his music, to the DJs (and wannabes) in the place, he proceeded to absolutely astound them with his ability to layer tracks, manipulate basslines and throwdown accapellas with absolutely no effort whatsoever. He played along, keeping that uptempo, Chicago house feel at all times. He played music with a bit of soul and a bit of fun that always keeps a crowd jackin’. James never let up during his set. All in attendance were dancing as hard in their third hour of dancing as they were in their first, and the tunes never flattened out either. Bumpy bass-lines, swing samples, jazzy keys all drifted through each minute of James set, making for a really refreshing change to big breakdowns and so called funky basslines ad nauseum. The other great thing about the ‘freshness’ of James’ set were the tracks he continually pulled out for the trainspotters. This was truly enjoyed with the countless unreleased tracks (hence the lack of tracks listed) James played on the night as well as playing the tracks that most Sydney DJs cant get away with, again showing his supreme ability to manipulate tracks to make them more dancefloor friendly. Towards the last halfhour of his set the dancefloor began to show fatigue, which was more than fair, considering the continual intensity of the set, so James began to slow things down and treat them to some of the best deep house tracks I had heard in a night club for a while. His final track was Iz and Diz – “Mouth” – the small vocal sample with the beautifully filtered vocal harmony filled the globe as James Curd closed his eyes and sang along while everyone realized they had come to the end of one the best house sets Sydney had seen in a long time.
After James came Illya who was certainly excited from James’ set and proceeded to keep the crowd pumping. About three-quarters into his set there were some technical difficulties and mixers had to be swapped over – thankfully by this stage it was approaching the 6am mark and the remaining crowd were happy to put up with an extremely quick swap over. After the swap Illya kept it going til the few left had well and truly run out of steam – and rightly so, they had come to the end of a seriously good party with some of the best music and definitely one of the best vibes I had experienced in a club for quite some time.