Noorderslag 2010

22:30 - 23.15 Paul Spymania (uk)
23.15 - 00.00 Slugabed (uk)
00.00 - 00.45 Loops Haunt (uk)
00.45 - 01.30 2562 (nl)
01.30 - 02.15 Appleblim (uk)
02.15 - 03.00 Scuba (uk)

Paul Spymania
From 1995 until 2000 the Spymania record label stood for innovation and quality in a way few labels can lay claim to, releasing debut records by Squarepusher, Jamie Lidell and Cassetteboy among others. Label co-founder Paul Spymania is now internationally known as one of the masterminds behind the phenomenal Sub:stance parties at Berlin’s infamous Berghain, and has recently been returning to the turntables in Berlin and beyond to spin some heavy Dub selections as the perfect start to a bass heavy, forward thinking night.  Sticking to his Old School guns playing vinyl only, and with 18 years of DJing under his belt, Paul really is a true turntablist pro. Hold tight selectah!

Slugabed
Love to lie lazily stinking around in bed all day? Then you’re a slugabed. So the British dubstep and grime producer of that name, also resident-dj at parties like Them (London) and Donky Pitch (in his Brighton domicile), sounds exactly like it: too lazy to speed it up or write a nice melody. Instead of it there’s spluttering 8-bit electro in discordant stumbling bouts of cyber funk, like the man ate an old Atari for breakfast, washed down with some old George Clinton-freak jams - in bed of course. The beats are slow, the bass is low, the music is thick and syrupy. And extremely intriguing.

Loops Haunt
His name says it all. Loops Haunt, bizarre sound potter from the Scottish Highlands, makes loops that even haunt you in your sleep. Now, with Loops Haunt that won’t happen any time soon, falling asleep, unless you’d find it dead boring to see this cut-and-paste king dismantle dubstep, techno, ambient, broken beats, glitch and grime and - with what else his sampler holds - to hear him build brilliant, brooding, extraordinarily exciting horror landscapes from it. After his debut at the Dutch State-X New Forms festival, Groningen can brace itself for a spectacular visit of this beats terrorist. Seat belts on!

2562
If you want to know where dubstep producer Dave Huismans lives, just look at his stage name, which not coincidentally resembles a postcode from The Hague. A little joke that has nothing to do with his music, or it should be its skippiness, a feature that can’t be traced back to the garage roots of dubstep. Rather 2562 seems influenced by broken beats and even the imperturbable four-to-the-floor of techno. The latter is not surprising, given the deep house and techno parties of Huismans' other alter ego A Made Up Sound. So, with 2562 Huismans is also out for the dance floor. The virtual one, through the new album ‘Unbalance’, and the real one, at Euro Sonic.

Appleblim
Legowelt going for a quiet pint with Armando, whilst Neal Howard has an altercation with Sly & Robbie at the bar, properly shouting and all. That’s the way Bristol-based dubstep producer Laurie ‘Appleblim’ Osbourne describes the music he makes. In other words: electro meets house meets reggae meets techno. But then you don’t know how off-kilter his tracks are, how deep and deadly his basses, how brittle and metallic his sound. And that Appleblim, who runs the hip Skull Disco label together with Shackleton and keeps his own Apple Pips label afloat, is worldwide known as one of the hottest dubsteppers of the second wave. And rightly so.

Scuba
It’s just like scuba diving with Scuba: you end up in a miraculous underwater world, although this time populated with dubstep fish in all shapes and sizes. Some stately and slow, others cheerful and fast as quicksilver. The basses are deep, of course, and the beats come from the back of the garage, but otherwise Scuba - aka British dj/producer Paul Rose – is actually always on the hunt for a clear techno beat and a glimpse of soul vocals. Once he’s found them, he won’t let them go. So it is with most releases on his own Hot Flush Recordings and so he sounds on nights like Sub:Stance in Berlin. Or here, at EuroSonic.