The annual madness of the free street festival Distortion hit Copenhagen once again late this May. The 5-day festival draws in 300.000 people from Denmark and Europe and takes places in three distinct boroughs of the City. This time with a street party at Nørrebro, Vesterbro and the harbour area. There's several night time club events during these days after the street parties closes, but these are not free. It's all topped of with a Final Party on the Saturday and a chill out event on the Sunday for those still alive.
This time around, I attended the street parties at Nørrebro and Vesterbro. On the Wednesday, Nørrebro was packed with happy people drinking very cheap beer and dancing in the
streets. We walked around a bit to suck in the vibe at Kapelvej, where
my homie from KANT was playing, down to Skt. Hans Torv (check out a map here) and back down to Nørrebrogade, to meet up with the nice guys from Bassdrop in their backstage. The Bassdrop crew hosted the largest party of the day, right in the middle of Nørrebrogade, the main street of the borough. A couple of their own soldiers, like Karl Smart and Fat Pony where playing, along with the talented Faustix who played just before our number one Danish DJ Morten Breum. It was a massive party with people filling up the street as long as you could see. Morten Breum ripped the city apart while we partied backstage and on stage behind him on the decks. What a great first day!
The following day, bombed out from the insanities of the day before, we visited Vesterbro, (map here) and walked a bit around, checked out the guys from KANT again who this time played the La Villa deep house stage with Henri Matisse and Martinez. We checked out TooManyLeftHands, who played a nice prog house set and got the party started at Hadersundsgade, later on that stage we saw the final show from Copenhagen back 2 back with The Frederik. Pure electro madness, complete with mosh pit, crowdsurfing and even a guy surfing the crowd on an old couch. Great party. Check out this short video from this party below. After these two days I was completely beat, so I didn't manage to go to the harbour or the final party. If Distortion gets it funding in place for next year, you should definitely come and join this crazy street party in Wonderful Copenhagen.
My beloved hometown of Copenhagen offered a handful of truly world class EDM artist in just 6 days. Here's a walk-through of the four concerts I attended in that insane first week of May.
Feed Me - Sunday April 29th
We casually walked in to the old steam driven pump station from 1858, now resurrected as a mid-size venue, when the young mau5keteer Feed Me from London played his slamming One Click Headshot from the new smaller stage on the first floor. He had obviously started early, as it was a school day the day after, so we missed the first half hour. We probably were about 200 dubstep lovers that had made it to the old water works building in central Copenhagen that Sunday evening. None the less, people were going nuts to the hard electro and dubsteppy tunes from Feed Me. I even saw people surfing the small crowd. Feed Me was clearly impressed by our late Sunday enthusiasm and twetted : "Shows like that are what DJing is all about. Copenhagen out of nowhere, it's turned into messiness".
He played a lot of his own stuff like Whiskers, One Click Headshot, Trichitillomania from his latest EP as well as his old hit Cloudburn and a lot of other good stuff including quite a few moobahton tracks, that seems to be the new black among EDM DJ's.
I wrote about Feed Me back in February where you can also check out his latest EP. Below you can enjoy his banger One Click Headshot from that EP.
While Feed Me moved to the left of the stage to enjoy a bottle of Jack D with his entourage, Flux Pavilion teared the place apart with his bass heavy UK style dubstep. People went absolutely nuts and security had to get on the stage to keep the crowd of it.
He'd also play a few moombah tracks but kept it pretty dubstep in general playing his own tracks like Hold Me Close, I Can't Stop, the Superbad track with his Circus buddy Doctor P and of course Bass Cannon the made the place crumble in bass related spasms. Flux Pavilion truly rocked the spot and was a notch over Feed Me in crowd control and performance.
Bass Cannon kill it that Sunday, see it in the video and check out some of his other great tracks below.
Flux Pavilion and Feed Me at Pumpehuset gets 4 out of 6 stars.
Porter Robinson - Thursday May 3rd
OK, first show of the crazy first weekend of May, with young gun Porter Robinson at the place called Rust in the multicultural borough of Copenhagen called Nørrebro. Rust was originally created in the 80's as a campaign headquarter and café by some anti nuclear power activists and has later served as a nightclub and urban music venue. The place was pretty packed at the main floor and I would guess there were around 300 guests that night. The 20 year old American, now signed on the Skrillex label OWSLA, started out pretty hard and kept the tempo up playing great electro house-, some moombah- and a few dubstep tracks. The small dancefloor in front of the low and small stage was packed and security had to step in to prevent people from getting hurt in the chaos.
He played a couple of his own tracks, like Unison, as well as the Knife Party remix, both making the crowd very exited. He did a very cool set with high energy and variation and the crowd loved him, and so did I.
Porter Robinson gets 5 out of 6 stars.
Check out the video below from when he played the Unison remix by Knife Party and his latest track Language.
Around 8000 people turned up at historic Forum, the large exhibition and concert hall, that was actually blown up during the German occupation back in 1943, to see the sensation from our blue and yellow neighbors to the east. They sure had a hell of a party on the large Forum indoor floor. Warm up was from local DJ's Kongsted and the duo TooManyLeftHands. Personally I enjoyed the first half the most, where he played a handful og my favorites like Ingrosso and Alesso's Calling, In My Mind by Ivan Gough and Feenixpawl, a really nice mashup of Antidote and Greyhound by SHM and of course the neoclassic Levels mixed with that horrible Gotye song to keep it "fresh" I guess. Never the less, Avicii blew up the spot once again since WW2, with his monster hit Levels that made people scream and go absolutely insane. The VIP section turned me down quite a bit, there wasn't really anything VIP or Deluxe about it and it was filled with steroid pumped and heavily tattooed drug dealer types, that made it a bit hard to enjoy the show.
Avicii (and the sloppy production) gets 3 out of 6 stars.
I've included a video from the show and his latest unreleased collab with Nicky Romero below.
9000 people of all ages and subcultures had shown up, from tweens and business school graduates to parents with children and old fucks like myself. Skrillex has a broad appeal it seems. Warmup was some nice drum n' bass from Netsky but it was clear that everybody just waited to get to see the LA freakshow.
Most of his set was identical with what he played at UMF Miami in March, but there was, for me, one major difference. He played maybe five or six Knife Party tracks! He didn't in Miami, probably because Knife Party played the next day on the same stage, but it made all the difference for me as I both got to enjoy Skrillex own tracks and remixes as well as the greatest tracks from my beloved Knife Party. Of course he also played all his own stuff like Breakn' A Sweat, Devils Den, Ruffneck, First of the Year, Kill Everybody and the new Make It Bun Dem and several of his great remixes like his In for the Kill remix, the Promises remix, the Levels remix and of course the outstanding Cinema remix.
I found it one of the best concerts I've attended in Copenhagen maybe ever and would not hesitate to give it top marks, if it wasn't for the effective but somewhat aggressive security guys plowing through the crowd scouting for sinners to "arrest".
Skrillex gets 5 out of 6 stars.
Below you'll find a video of when he closed hos set playing Cinema in front of a sea of lighters and cell phones and his latest track with Damian Marley "Make It Bun Dem".
Morten Breum, the most popular Danish DJ with over 94.000 fans on Facebook, played a sold out Vega, one of my favorite venues i Copenhagen, with a capacity of 1500 on the floor and balcony in beautiful functionalist surroundings with mosaics, panels and tiles designed back in the 50's by world renowned danish architect Vilhelm Lauritzen. This was the first show back in Denmark, since he and his manager Nima Kay from I AM CRE8TIONS moved to LA to pursue an international break through. He has since been working on some new tracks and playing major nightclubs around the US, like LIV Miami and Pacha NYC. At Miami Music Week he played a couple of pool parties and I actually attended one of them on top of the Dream Hotel on Collins, but I sadly just missed him, so I was really looking forward to catch this show in Copenhagen.
At Vega on April 21st, Breum displayed the excellent DJ skills, that has made him so popular in Denmark, he truly is a gifted DJ, but also a great choice of songs, with neoclassic hits like Atom by Nari & Milani, Greyhound by SHM, In My Mind by Ivan Gough & Feenixpawl, Toulouse by Nicky Romero, Calling by Ingrosso & Alesso and his new tracks Get Static and the epic Larva (get it NOW on Beatport, do it, seriously, do it). The 1500 guests sure loved it, going mental to the music. He also had a sweet stage setup with a 3D like beehive setting around the DJ booth with funky graphics being "projected" on the squares (or however they did it). Very impressive, can't wait to see him again at Summerburst in Stockholm this summer.
Back in January, I wrote about him and this new track Larva and predicted that this big room banger of Avicii-like proportions, will skyrocket him into international stardom. I still believe that. The Larva has turned into a beautiful Butterfly.
Got tickets today for Swedish big room superstar Avicii aka Tim Berg aka Tim Bergling in May in Forum, Copenhagen, one of the largest (non stadium) venues in CPH. First 1000 presale tickets sold out in 50 minutes last monday, the remaining 5000 will probably sell out within today.
The annual madness of the free street festival Distortion hit Copenhagen once again late this May. The 5-day festival draws in 300.000 people from Denmark and Europe and takes places in three distinct boroughs of the City. This time with a street party at Nørrebro, Vesterbro and the harbour area. There's several night time club events during these days after the street parties closes, but these are not free. It's all topped of with a Final Party on the Saturday and a chill out event on the Sunday for those still alive.
This time around, I attended the street parties at Nørrebro and Vesterbro. On the Wednesday, Nørrebro was packed with happy people drinking very cheap beer and dancing in the
streets. We walked around a bit to suck in the vibe at Kapelvej, where
my homie from KANT was playing, down to Skt. Hans Torv (check out a map here) and back down to Nørrebrogade, to meet up with the nice guys from Bassdrop in their backstage. The Bassdrop crew hosted the largest party of the day, right in the middle of Nørrebrogade, the main street of the borough. A couple of their own soldiers, like Karl Smart and Fat Pony where playing, along with the talented Faustix who played just before our number one Danish DJ Morten Breum. It was a massive party with people filling up the street as long as you could see. Morten Breum ripped the city apart while we partied backstage and on stage behind him on the decks. What a great first day!
