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The Bassment is a weekly article bringing you coverage of the best in Hip Hop and Electronic music from around Vancouver. Weekly interviews, event coverage, album and concert reviews that show how awesome our city's electronic and hip hop scene really is.If you think there is someone or something that needs coverage in this city in regards to the Hip Hop / Electronic community then get in touch with us. |
Summer's over in case you didn't notice. 6 weeks of sun this summer was a bummer but seems like there is always tons of action going on this time of year. Olio, VIFF, yada. I checked out the 11th annual  on Sep. 9 and also was at the Concrete Park jam at the Woodwards' atrium on Wednesday night. New Forms really should be higher on the radar in the city. I think for doing what they do and combining what they combine together they are not worth missing. The media art and electronic music festival has been doing it up for over a decade which of course is no joke in this town. And as we sadly are missing the Livestock block party this year (though they had that thing at Strathcona park earlier this summer), the and 's Concrete Park jam in the Woodward's atrium could turn out to be a cool replacement. It was in the spirit of the old school hip hop park jams with the soundsystem, bboying and best of all, a free event in a nice public space.
Check out the review and tons of pics below.
has been delivering on its' hype to be one of the city's art/music/and beyond hubs. Doing New Forms was a straight up perfect match. As the New Forms Festival's mandate is "exploring the convergence of media arts and electronic music," the versatile multi-room Waldorf housed this festival like a glove. There were 4 rooms set up for music performances (both the Leeteg room and Tiki Bar upstairs and the Cabaret and Hideaway downstairs) and the individual hotel rooms acted as the art exhibition space. There were also a WHOLE lot of visuals everywhere as you can see in the pics below including projections on the hotel's outside walls and even to the building across the street. And another art exhibition in a trailer outside the cabaret and last, but dam not least, a BBQ set up outside serving Argentinian style sausages (last pic below).
So.....your experience was being able to check out 4 different music sets, cruising upstairs to the see the hotel rooms all decked out in creative ways, visuals at every turn (inside and out) and topping it off with a hearty ass hot dog, Buenos Aires style. It was so unexpectedly good, my jaw was sore from stretching to chomp it down so far fast.
As stated by Malcolm Levy, the festival director: "This year we are completely excited about having the entire festival at the Waldorf.. Under the thematic of Public Domain, we are creating a festival concept that will include installations in the rooms, lobby, and facades of the building, as well as different music in each room of the building. On Sunday we are doing our first outdoor show in the parking lot with Sun Araw Band, Deadbeat, No Gold, Tyger Dhula and Danuel Tate and V Vecker Orchestra. Each night will be completely different so we encourage people to come down and experience the entire narrative..."
I only checked it out on the Friday night but that one night packed a whole lot of an experience for a single outing. There were a lot of sick beats and soundscapes but I think I've walked away intrigued most by singer who I saw perform with Erica Dee sometime back at Fortune. She does not seem to have an official site up yet but her voice caught me off guard as I walked into the Leeteg Room as she was performing with a voice that reminded me of Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon or Esthero.
One of the hardest working men in our music scene, Jeff Herrera and the along with W2 threw a little jam called Concrete Park this past Wednesday night at the Woordward's atrium area (the space between Nesters, London Drugs and now the new W2 media cafe and event space). With husband and wife DJ tandem, and providing the beats, the event goers plus curious onlookers checked out the bboy battle taking place.
It was cool to see these curious onlookers passing by checking out how hip hop did it early on, with DJs and Bboys representing the true elements of the art. The event also was supported by and brought out many of the like-minded heads from the shops in the gastown area like from and from .
L-R: Jeff from , from
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