Photography by Lilou.
When Kitsuné’s Maison compilations drop throughout the year, if it wasn’t enough just to pop them in your CD player, the French electro label also throw amazing launch parties, and their club night to launch volume 10 was one of the best of the year.
Kicking off with a DJ set from the highly touted Teeth, things really got going when Is Tropical took to the stage. Appearing with their trademark bandannas across their faces, the packed crowd where quick to take notice. Kitsuné’s big hope for 2011, Is Tropical, they’re a lot rougher around the edges than the label’s artists’ usually shiny exterior, the experimental, reverbed electro has echoes of the near indescribable jungle genre, with recent single South Pacific drawing the biggest cheer. Racing through a half-hour set, the London three-piece might not appear it at first but their roughed-up sound is powerful and inductive and closed up to rapturous applause.
Headlining the night, Jamaica have made gigantic strikes in 2010. Their debut album No Problem is one of the albums of the year and more than translated to an amazing live show. Running through Short And Entertaining, I Think I Like U 2 and Gentlemen, their power-pop electro is so full of exuberance and life it’s hard not to be drawn in. Closing with When Do You Wanna Stop Working, whether onlookers had heard their music before, they were sure to check it out again after, as the hipster Shoreditch crowding started an usual wave of jumping not long into the set.
After the bands wrapped up, DJs quickly took over, and though Classixx were billed higher, and certainly got everyone in the mood, it was The Twelves that blew the Village Underground away. Playing non-stop electro, their epic set drew in a couple of their remixes and a heap of tracks you’ve probably never heard before with with faultless mixing and a non-stop pace throughout, the duo have truly announced themselves on the scene as live DJs, as well as wonder remixers. Taking things a little heavier, it was left to Rory Phillips to close out the night, and what a night it was.
Kitsuné has done themselves proud with Maison Vol. 10, but the launch party was even better. I’ll be back for the number 11 party without a doubt. And putting the bands and DJs on the bill at the top of my must see again list.