The beautiful gobshite: LV15 Interview Pt 3

And so to the end of LV15′s epic interview in which we discuss international clubbing, domestic clubbing and the beginning of the end for mash ups.

7. You were legendary for your reports on International Bastard events in Germany? what do you remember of them?

Not as much as you might expect. For starters, I can’t actually tell you how many I actually went to. It’s either 3 or 4, maybe even 5. The details from them have blurred together into this one big tangled web of half memories that took place in the same country that I have stored and labelled in a folder marked ‘STRESS’ in my brain. It’s quite a large folder as you might imagine.

I remember being wrecked before even getting to the club on the first one. I was then handed a bag of weed and that was pretty much all she wrote for the remainder of the first night. I have Cropstar to thank for sending a pic back to GYBO of somebody’s arse (either Bush or Superdan, i forget who) hovering over my passed out head.

I also remember going over early with Matt Catt and Lumpy to another one and spending the best part of a week just wandering round absolutely stoned off my gourd. This visit also included a trip to the absolute worst drum and bass night in the history of mankind. Ever one to make lemonade when handed awful german people sat around in a room full of the acrid output of a smokemachine listening to the most godawful gabba drum and bass hybrid shaped lemons, we did at least use the opportunity to invent the game ‘blow the tissue’ which would become a staple at many bootleg nights in the future.

Then there was the one in Saarbruken organised by Andreas which was an absolute masterclass on why I should never be in stressful situations when alcohol is the only available drug to hand. Which ended with me trying to hit some random german guy because he made fun of Andreas’ balloon hat. Man that was a fucking dark weekend. I came out of the blackout I had drank myself into by being wakened by one of the WhoBoys who had been informed by the staff at the pub we were staying at that I had suddenly decided to check myself out at like 5am in the morning, walked outside and then proceeded to go to sleep on the step.

So that’s three but I can’t escape the feeling that there is another one that has somehow blended in with one of the first two I mentioned. Thankfully I don’t have copies of any of the post trip reports to check any of this. The only reason I ever wrote trip reports was to get all the shit out of my head. My senses were so switched on at every point from the moment I left the house to the moment I got back, my subconcious would then go through everything in detail when I got back to find things to torture me about. It seemed to help just pouring it all out, it helped me to get a decent night’s sleep anyway.

8. Were you involved with the club Bastard? What was it like?

Nope, all the reports were that it was 100 people crammed into a room that should hold 50. Sweating and falling over each other, sounded like absolute hell to me, at least without mdma. I made the decision early on that I would give Bastard a swerve because well London always has fucking everything doesn’t it. I used whatever money I might have spent on going to Bastard on going to other people’s nights in different places instead. So there was West of Bastard in Bristol and Cease and desist in Preston. I even went to the Boomselection night in Manchester which will live long in my memory as the worst night out I have ever had. 

I think I eventually went to one Bastard when it was held in the Macbeth. I seem to recall something else in some part of London but I think that might have been a 72 night or something like that. It’s not like i’m all dewey eyed over the things I may have missed happening at Bastard. I once saw Lumpy put a record on in a half empty pub in Bristol, come out from behind the decks, stand in what he must have been decided would be the dancefloor, take his top off and then dance like he was at a helter skelter weekender. I’ll take that memory over anything Bastard had to offer, thank you.

9. It all seemed to exciting and vibrant in 2002/03 to hear mash ups. What marked the start of the end?

The beginning was the start of the end. If you polled all the people about what my answer to this question would be. You’d probably get a bunch of different answers but most of them would be slanted towards an individual or group of people, or nation. I don’t think that’s the case though. Sure, the careerists and the people who were only interested in their own profile, etc were a huge fucking pain in the balls but they weren’t the main problem with the whole bootleg/mashup scene.

The actual, real, main problem was simple. It was a lack of sources. If all the acapellas and instrumentals of the world were available, it would have been a lot harder for everything to become jaded. When you go to one of these mashup nights that has 10+ djs on and every single one of them has a milkshake bootleg or a missy elliot bootleg or whatever the latest acapella to surface is bootleg, then it’s pretty obvious that the writing is on the wall.

With more sources, people could have carved out their own niche, their own unique slant on doing things but with however many pellas there actually were, a couple of thousand at most. All anyone ever could hope to do is yet another variation on a theme and hope that their version of goyte or the gossip or whatever, would somehow stand out amongst all the others. Maybe one day in the future there will actually be a piece of freely available, easy to use software that rips the component parts out of pretty much anything  and then maybe we can try this whole business again but until that time, best just to leave it be.

If you give someone a box with 100 pieces of lego in it, there’s only so many things they can make, even with the aid of imagination, dedication and talent. However, if you give someone a box of lego and tell them there is plenty more where that came from, people can try putting them together in all kinds of new and interesting ways.

10. What’s your favourite insult?

Gobshite. A word as beautiful as it is effective for conjuring up an impression of exactly the type of person you are referring to.

And so, here’s some LV15 originals from the Stickman Facepalm EP which demonstrates his love of space sounds and hi-bpm dnb (free download).

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~ by acidted on October 24, 2012.