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Philadelphia Laptop Battle 8, Oct. 4, North Star Bar
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Philadelphia Laptop Battle 8, Oct. 4, North Star Bar
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| Photo | Brian Howard |
| City Rain (left) and Rudy Solo. |
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| Photo | Brian Howard |
| The winner, again, Jason Carr. |
Last night nine local laptop DJs squared off at the North Star for Philadelphia Laptop Battle 8. What is a laptop battle, you ask? Essentially DJs with their digital music libraries stored squarely on their hard drives and all manner of gadgets, switches, knobs, faders, etc., get on stage and get five (or in later rounds, 10) minutes each to rock the crowd. A panel of three judges (of which I was part) rates each DJ and his performance on a scale of 20, with 10 points awarded for sound quality/song selection, 5 points for liveness (essentially, how much fun/not fun is it to watch this dj tweak out his tracks) and 5 points for crowd response.
The first round of 9 five-minute sets weeded out Darrel Ashbury, Freqs, Gaubie and Moths, leaving Ayahuasca, City Rain, last year's Philly champ Jason Carr, Rekall and Rudy Solo. In round two, the uneliminated got 10 minutes to stretch out, display a little more range and chops, and build that energy.
As the evening wore on, City Rain and Jason Carr emerged as the crowd and judge favorites (Rudy Solo advanced to the final round as well). City Rain's swelling, melodic, at-times a little anthemic downtempo was a stark contrast to Carr's tweaky-deaky minimal techno. City Rain used his effects with flair, looking at times as if he were leaning into a fader like a guitarist leans into a solo; Carr was relaxed and fluid, bobbing around to the pop-pop-pop of his tracks. In the end, Carr emerged the repeat victor, though in this judge's mind it was a little too close to call, and, what the hell, I had City Rain on my scorecard.
Things got hot and heated throught the evening. Several "posse" members of ousted DJs approached the judges and accused us of cronyism and all-around poor judgment. Tempers flared. At least one guy in overalls talked a lot of shit. Let it be known that not only did I not know any of the DJs involved, when the evening started, the only guy I knew in the whole club was co-host Dev79 (CP's DJNights guy).
To close the evening, Carr squared off against Baltimore's k-rai, the winner of March's Laptop Battle 7, for the right to compete in the next round in Seattle.
More photos | Video from the event after the jump.
| Jason Carr works the room. |
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| City Rain works the, um, keyboard. (Video of Jason Carr forthcoming). |
City Rain Rocks!
for once, i felt among peers. looking forward to the next one!
City Rain got robbed - that was the best presentation!
Thanks you guys!
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