John 00 Fleming - Australian tour round up 2012

Australian tour round up 2012

by John 00 Fleming on Sunday, 16 September 2012 at 23:17 ·


It seems to have become an annual occurrence where I put pen to paper at the end of my Australian tour. After all I have 24hours to kill on the plane! Last year I gave you an insight of what goes through my mind when working a crowd. This year I'll give you an idea of how certain situations can affect the way I play. This was certainly the case on this tour. Last year I didn't reach my power moment/Crescendo in Sydney. This year I feel this very same thing happened in Melbourne. The fall out of that resulted in both Perth and Brisbane getting hammered in a huge way. So you can see, one incident can trigger a reaction at other gigs.  





I have a super close connection to Australia. Quite often I'll dig out a photo I took at a huge Gods Kitchen event in 2001 in Melbourne, I played the last set and this photo was taken after my third encore. The place was still 90% full and the room still buzzing with energy. No one wanted to go home. Including me. From that day our bond was made and Melbourne became a very special place for me to play. I'm heading home feeling. I've not done my job 100% in Melbourne on this current tour and it's hurting me bad.





From a DJ's point of view, there's a big difference between playing festivals and club shows. Festivals you're very restricted on what you can do musically. You're usually surrounded by peak time main room style DJ's, so you have very little time or space to express yourself musically. Also many of the people in front of you will be there to see the main headliners, and it's a near impossible task trying to win them over especially if you play a completely different style. It's for this reason many of the specialists DJ's are heading back into clubs. This is the reason why my JOOF Editions concept was born so that I could start doing my job as a DJ again and express myself musically with extended sets. This whole experience is a learning curve for me, and Australia is proving this.





I have a hell of a lot of things to compute upon playing in a club for the very first time. Not only do I need to go into DJ mode and start reading the crowd, I need to analyse the sound in the room. I listen for the natural acoustics in the room to get a feel for the character of the sound. This makes a huge difference of how I will play. If I have a great sounding room, I know that I can use my technical skills to create a flow. I then look at my music as tools to do the job in hand. I know the dynamics of each track, so programming these along side clever use of Eq/mixing can create huge gear/energy changes while keeping in a deep flow. The more I return to the same venue, the more I get to know the dynamics of the room and the crowd in front of me. It's the same in return, they get to know and understand me. It's a two-way deal that is proving a huge success across the world.





Australia is different. I play here once a year, each time I seem to play at different venues, especially in Melbourne. So I don't get a change to get to know a room. This year’s tour has just highlighted this flaw with my JOOF Editions plan that I intend to address with help from your input. I could easily bang out a peak time set at every show, but that's not what this concept is about, we want to enjoy a musical experience/progression. I never reached my turbo/crescendo moment last year at Chinese laundry in Sydney. This was my first time playing this venue and got completely engrossed in my set, I lost track of time and the club needed to close. Throughout the four hour set, not only was I working the crowd, but also my brain was computing the room. This contributed to the loss of time on my behalf. Psy trance can often be bass heavy, especially on sound systems that are not used too or set up for this style of music. The DJ booth is stuck in the corner of the room, so I couldn't figure out if I was in a bass trap or this was the room itself. Upon researching afterwards, I think the bass was drowning out some of the mid range melodies. It didn't happen this year as I was now in a more familiar room, and tweaked the Eq myself ensuring a clearer sound. This time around I pounded with some turbo action, this being a score I needed to settle.





A great achievement in Sydney, but the exact same sinario happened in Melbourne this year. I never reached my turbo/Crescendo moment. Being honest I'm gutted this event didn't happen at Roxanne., Last years show was fantastic. Again I was computing at that show, knowing the areas for improvement. I got to know the room and crowd so a return to that venue would have been mind blowing as I had already built a foundation and knew exactly what to do for the return leg. So here I am feeling devastated that I had to start all over, my new learning curve resulted in me not reaching my magic moments , Technical issues that I hid well surrounded me. The LAN link on the CDJ's kept crashing. My monitors were terrible, the right hand side monitor was pretty much blown. Something was dramatically wrong with the sound system. As I tried to perform energy shifts with my deep tracks, the tools that usually lift the crowd, the opposite was happening. The sound system wasn't registering those low punching driving frequencies, instead all you could hear was the top range, 'tap tap tap' of the top note of the baseline, in the similar way you hear dance music on lap top speakers. The driving frequencies of the kick and bass were completely missing.

A huge game was emerging in my head, was it the poor monitor speakers in my DJ booth, or the actual system? It took me well over an hour to figure it was the main sound system, resulting in completely messing my flow. Half of my music collection relies on a good sound system to translate the energy, my brain now getting fried on where to head musically. In situations like this, I'll go into emergency mode and thrash out high energy (Mid range frequencies) music that doesn’t rely on low end from the sound system. It's an easy fix,  But this is JOOF Editions and not what things are about.





Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I should have bust open the emergency section and thrashed it out. This is what hurt me the following day as I replayed the whole thing in my head. I'm already being told to stop being harsh on myself because the room was packed to the very end, but I personally feel I’ve let Melbourne down, this being my close family of the past decade. I know inside there's another 50% inside of me to give. I have unfinished business to address.

Both Perth and Brisbane got the brunt of this frustration for the rest of the weekend. I've been playing at Metro for well over 10 years, I know that club very, very well. I stepped up to the familiar DJ booth and pounded them. This stress relief therapy felt so good, that I really unleashed all my nuclear weapons at my second visit to the courtyard at Barsoma in Brisbane the following day. Again being used to familiar surroundings along with a solid sound system and room I've got to know, I played one hell of a fist clenching intense dark and hard set. This will now make sense to all who were there, I think they were quite shocked at the relentless attack...... and knackered at the end!! It felt good though.





I'm only human, and can sometimes make the wrong call, as I feel I did in Melbourne. Unlike other territories where I revisit clubs regularly every 3 - 6 months, I get a chance to fix the problem, but I only play once a year in Australia. It's killing me having to wait a whole year to address this. The JOOF Editions concept is working at its best with frequent visits to same cities at the same clubs. Upon each visit I get to know the club owner/promoter, I personally get involved making changes to the room, the sound, the lighting. We keep tweaking things each and every time until things become perfect. I also use these venues as a training ground to mentor local DJ's, share my experience of how to open rooms professionally, and eventually give them peak time sets. I'm riddled with guilt for not checking this sound system in Melbourne. I had phone calls with the guys in; Sydney, Canberra, Perth and Brisbane. All these venues worked, but I didn't have a direct contact with Melbourne. I need to find a home hub for Melbourne.





So my question to Australia, can JOOF Editions sustain coming over twice a year. Will the magic be lost? Are you used to seeing DJ's just once a year?Regardless, I'm going to lock down the same regular venues so I can continue to keep building this concept and get personally involved with the technical side of things.  We'll also look into bringing guests with me to keep things fresh, I'd like to bring people you'd never ever dream of getting a chance to see. People like Airwave, E-Clip, and Oliver Prime etc. We'll listen to your requests, after all it has to become your event too. It's working around the rest of the World and I don't see why it can't work in Australia?Let me know your thoughts......

Love how JooF is so brutally honest....

and seems to care about getting it 'just right' a real DJ imho

note to armin, take note

i'd go see j00f twice a year, especially with some more obscure guests

Could really do with him releasing some of his livesets via his blog/website/soundcloud/mixcloud. Or just sets generally from Joof Editions nights.

There is such a dearth of quality underground Trance at the moment.

I you are reading these pages Joof........ you know what to do mate!

some quality four plus hour sets would be awesome

Cheers rich, thanks for uncovering this for us.... How humble is the guy?

If joof is seeing this, then we would love to see him twice a year. The show you did put on for Brisbane was awesome. I take my hat of to someone putting forward something to the crowd that is totally different and what he is pationate about. I have seen a handful of your Brisbane shows over the past ten years and they are always furious and infectious.

Not sure if barsoma venue is totally cut out for him? Check the hernan vids and you will get my drift for those who don't get where I am coming from....

https://soundcloud.com/dj-jon-cockle/dj-jon-cockle-versatile-01-09

Not J00F, but this guy plays at a lot of his J00F Editions nights, an Englishman called Jon Cockle.

He puts all sorts of mixes on his Facebook page (live & studio), sadly they don't stay 'up' for long, most of the older links are dead.

But if you like your Trance/Progressive deep and dark - watch this guy!

I think he did a guest mix on GTG's about a year ago.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/DJ-Jon-Cockle/326676388831