05 Nov 2017 // A review by Freecell
V Energy and Audiology brings DnB legend and pioneer Roni Size touring his New Forms Anniversary Live show at The Studio in Auckland. I had arrived early at the entrance I could already hear some drum and bass playing walking down to the stage I realised how long its been since I was last at The Studio, suddenly the memories flow in from previous events of Shift to BSE, the venue had character and a lot of history.
Cyrus was the first DJ of the night playing 10pm - 11pm he played a nice selection of drum and bass, easy going liquid and all sorts, there was one or two quirky songs in his set. The sound system was sounding tight, there was a massive screen at the back of the stage, behind the DJ's it was displaying interesting visualizations and projected images that changed in random movements with the sound. It was impressive and gave the venue a professional and world class impression as it strongly enhanced the experience to the audience. Cyrus did a good job of changing the style of the music to flow on to next artists.
Next up was Chicorreli and MC
Tali playing a 90 minute set before Roni Size. Tali makes introductions they start their set with a slow Hip-Hop sounding beat with a thick deep bass sound, Sounding dope! gradually speeding up to a Drum and Bass tempo. Tali knows how to work the crowd. The dance floor and venue was filled to almost capacity in 10 minutes of their set. The place was going off! Chicorreli bringing his liquid Lowdown sound to the mix, Their performance was smooth, exciting and powerful. Like a weapon of Mass Bass destruction, mixing up different styles and genres of Hip-Hop, halftime and sounds I have know idea about? (awesome though!) always bringing It back to DnB. The whole place was moving!
Towards the end of their set, Roni Size came out with a sound technician and checked over his music equipment, MC Tali made some brief introductions and a 5 minute timer started counting down to the "New Forms" Anniversary Live Show! Chicorreli and MC Tali holding the dance floor with ease. The suspense thickens.. Roni Size music equipment looked like 2 digital keyboards with LCD monitors set up in a "V" shape with what looked like a large mixer in the middle of the set up. All single components. Later on in the show I observed that the large mixer was actually some kind of drum machine processor of some sort, with a twist of the dial it raised the tempo or it doubled or tripled the rate of the beat, it was powerful and sounded awesome!
He finally comes on stage with his intro song, the countdown timer had completed its cycle and we were ready to party!
The sound was loud but absolute quality, and it most likely because his keyboards generating pure Wav samples of his
New Forms album. It was exciting, you couldn't help but dance, every song sounded great with high quality sound, There were some interesting music instruments he was DJ'ing from, I've never seen a set up like that before, I'm still curious to know exactly what he was using? There was times that his music processor got really loud and wasn't too sure if it was part of his show or if there was a glitch in the sound system?
The crowd was dancing and you could really feel the vibes, It was electric! towards the end MC Tali came out and they both gave their farewells, Roni Size had bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey to end his Anniversary show in Auckland. It was a celebration after all, he was even trying to spray the wine into the front audience lol, was a great moment for his final song.
Rhyas was the closing DJ for the event transitioning to some light neurofunk drum & bass slowly getting heavier into the early hours. His mixing was very sharp. Some people left possibly to try and catch the end of the DLR and ANT TC1 gig about 2 minutes down the road at Neck of the woods. Rhyas held the dance floor to the bitter end. What a quality Drum and Bass event! Roni Size still got it! And excellent performances from all DJ's and artists.
Review written by Kerry Kingi