- Soul Clap and Wolf + Lamb turned Southern California into South Florida for an afternoon earlier this May, recalling a casual WMC party and all of its trashy charm. A line had formed by 1:30 PM, and the fairly large rooftop was pretty much having it from the get go. Transparency is the name of the game for an outdoor party anywhere. Suddenly, you can gauge people's ages better, trace wrinkles and imperfections, tell when they're lying, catch more dirty secrets and awkward gestures, basically have an honest visual that contradicts your images of these people in a cold, dark warehouse. All of the mystique is gone, so the only thing left is proper, childish fun, which the hotly tipped foursome exploited.
Through their fairly open music policies, these four white dudes have come to represent a catch-all of house, techno, R&B, hip-hop, some disco, lots of guilty pleasures and esoteric in-house productions. The crowd was a direct mirror of this mix. Equal parts casual LA DJ crowd, usual promoter suspects, the Droog tech house fans, backpackers, a grip of the W+L entourage sporting cheeseball chains, as if we needed the visual reminder that there's a lot of posturing going on, and lecherous old Italian tailors...the usual.
Photo credit: Terence Patrick
The DJs delivered essentially exactly what I had expected. To quote another American, "they are who we thought they were." Which is to say we were treated to a pretty direct translation of their recent DJ Kicks album, sprinkled with the hip-hop and R&B they're known to bring. At its best, this is the most distinct take on Americana that I've seen in a while from a DJ set. This style of house party music clearly plays well at home in the States as it's in more familiar FM territory. It recalls a suburban house party from any of the last three decades. It's not far from what The Avalanches were trying to accomplish, crowd pleasing-wise.
Every party needs a villain, and in this case, the villain was the venue. A UK label head commented at one point, "the problem is that most people haven't figured out that the Standard hotels are cheaper than they advertise and aren't typically very fun at all." The sound was expectedly and embarrassingly low, aided in no part by the fact that the only speakers on the dance floor were literally on the dance floor, being absorbed by naked legs and body rolls. A brief chat with security revealed that it's not residents within earshot but, rather, gentleman's clubs (i.e. old, rich white men with cigars, not strip clubs) who typically blow whistles.
The party's personality prevailed as the sun went down, terrible sound and all. At 8, the roof had to clear for Moodymann's second LA appearance (the sound system would collapse around midnight). Meanwhile, the W+L/SC crew migrated over to Voodoo headquarters where they banged out slow jams on a proper system for a small crowd until at least 4 AM. The victory was small but noted.