NYE Weekend - Tour Journal

Happy New Year friends & fam :)

I'm finally back in LA after over a month of holiday traveling. It feels good to be back in the studio and back in the zone.

I need to get better at recapping these touring weekends as soon as they happen, I'm sure it will be easier now that I'm home and not around extended family/holiday madness.

NYE weekend was WILD to say the least. I played 3 shows in 3 days, each of them quite different from the other.

(Couldn't find any photos from that night, just emailed the promoter to send some over)

I started NYE weekend in Austin at Summit rooftop. After nearly a month staying with my in-laws in south Florida, this was a refreshing change of pace! I arrived in Austin early evening day of the show. The venue had a deal with the W Hotel in downtown Austin, so I had a pretty decent hotel to chill at before the show. It was also nice to finally have some alone time after being in a house full of extended family for over 3 weeks!

After working on my set, eating dinner, and taking a quick power nap (this has become pretty standard for me in my 40s lol) I headed over to Summit Rooftop which was an easy 7 minute walk from the hotel. I get there about 30 minutes before my set and realize that this venue is in fact a bottle service type club with house music blaring. The dj before me was playing some pretty cringe deep house edm type stuff, and I was wondering if I was at the right place. Surely enough the very accommodating and super sweet staff greeted me and made sure I was comfy. I was having a sober night so I asked for a bucket of Topo Chicos (my preferred sparkling water yummm).

Since I was headlining that night I played a very Machinedrum-heavy set full of exclusives, edits, and classics all around. It was a 90-minute set so I didn't do too much pre-planning other than making a few edits here and there. Fortunately, the crowd was majorly Machinedrum heads and I didn't have to play to the bottle service crowd. Started my set at 130
with a weird ambient intro piece that I made in the hotel and ended at 174 with the Gunshotta VIP. I don't have too much else to say about this show other than this edit of Novaform went the fuck offfff :

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8tik77ivdbfrpma7et2h9/Machinedrum-Holly-Novaform-BERY-Radiant-Light-WNDRLND-Remix.mp3?rlkey=rj52mdrp8f2b9yi8s16tiz3tq&dl=0

(4 AM ➕ crew celebrating by eating Joe's Pizza Brooklyn)

https://soundcloud.com/machinedrum/brooklyn-12-30-2023-b2b2b2b2b2b2b2b2b2b2b

Next up was the first edition of my ➕(plus) party in NYC. Up until that point, the most DJs we had going b2b in one night was 7 at our Chicago event back in November. This night was a whole other ballgame with a whopping total of 11 (!!!) DJs going b2b. Baauer, myself, Nosaj Thing and QRTR were the original announced "core" lineup. We then leaked various special guests over 2 months up until the day of the show: Bianca Oblivion (➕ resident), Falty DL, Jacques Greene, Jubilee, and Nikki Nair. We even had two more surprise guests come through, Brux and DJ Eh.

Before heading to the venue, I had to quickly drive to south brooklyn to pick up a rental VHS camcorder since I wasn't able to bring mine with me on the trip. After that I met up with my good friend and collaborator Angelica Bess and picked up 6 disposable cameras that I had shipped to her. Then I headed to the venue early to make sure we were set up and ready to go.

The party kicked off pretty quickly at 11 pm right after a Shed Theory show had finally cleared out. People showed up early, and most of the DJs were there as soon as the doors opened. I started the night as usual with a couple of ambient tunes but quickly started to turn up the energy as the room filled quite fast. Just as I started to play the first song with beats our massive pizza delivery from Joes arrived. I ran outside to pick up the order as Jason aka Nosaj Thing was pulling up. I was trying to say hi to Jason as the delivery driver was arguing with me about his tip (apparently door dash did not process the tip for some reason). We sorted it out and I ran back in to mix in the next track. I played some chill house music and as I started to venture into some acid territory Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene decided to hop on as I was approaching their bpm comfort zone.

The energy was quickly picking up and everyone was eager to jump on and add their flavor to the mix. It was so much fun seeing this conversation develop over time. No one was afraid to shift the energy in different directions, and it was all done so tastefully. These ➕ parties really put your skills as a DJ to the test as they require you to listen, think fast, be courteous, be super organized, and trust those around you. There were many moments when Bianca and I would look at each other and proclaim "I WAS GOING TO PLAY THAT ONE!".

(Jacques Greene dropping emo-bangers, photo by Jessica Licata)

Everyone had such a distinct flavor to add to the night. Baauer dropped some wild edits that got the room shaking (including a really funny baile funk edit of Robot Rock). Bianca brought her usual club bangers and wasn't afraid to bring the energy up any time it was even teasing at going down (she's clearly the most fearless DJ out of the bunch, not timid at all and I loooove it). Brux played some exclusive tunes from herself and others that border on the edge of clubby and euphoric dance music. I wasn't aware of DJ Eh before this event, he's a friend of one of the promoters. He fit in very nicely and played off of Bianca very well with lots of hype clubby tunes that went from Baltimore to Jersey and back. Falty DL played some leftfield melodic dance tunes that added a nice eclectic energy to the night. Jacques Greene laid down some emotional bangers that kept the energy up all while tugging at your heartstrings with sad boy melodics. Jubilee kept us smiling with her classic anthems mixed with a Miami meets Brooklyn flavor. Nikki Nair went deep on some fun electro vibes and even dropped an exclusive Flux Pavillion remix of his tune with Hudmo "Set The Roof" which was one of the biggest moments of the night. Nosaj Thing took us to dark places while putting smiles on our faces, and even dropped an old tune of mine near the end of the night *heart*. QRTR mixed in some high-energy house and techno throughout the night making sure to remind everyone that they had a pulse.

(6 CDJs ftw!!! Photo by Jessica Licata)

As the host of ➕ I like to bridge everything together by making connections between the different styles of the night. Aware of all of the different styles that would be on display, I spent weeks working on organizing my rekordbox folders by genre/vibes and made sure to include tunes that represented the different potentialities of the night. On one hand this approach allows me to go any direction I want and continue on other DJs flow. On the other, the sheer amount of music that I had on deck for that night would sometimes lead me to choice paralysis and I would end up not playing some of the tunes that I really wanted to play that night. Either way I had so much fun during this set and I hope the recording of the night shows!

PS, here's a download of the set!
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rfz9v9qxdmcxt9ak19s98/PLUSB2BBROOKLYN2023.mp3?rlkey=gz943huq6a1epd6c32njruvab&dl=0

And a full recap video on youtube :
https://youtu.be/su5bgd3sOug?si=XfVr6LOkqjXKgIKA

(vibes were high)

After being at the club from 10 pm until nearly 5 am, I was exhausted. I went back to the hotel and crashed for about 5 hours until I needed to be picked up to go to the airport to fly to my next gig in Charlotte, New Year's Eve supporting Eprom Syntheism Live.

(VERY CONVENIENT AND SUPER USEFUL IPAD HOLDER NEXT TO URINAL AT JFK AIRPORT 👍)

Direct support for Eprom is serious business. I knew there would be a nice mix of bass heads and experimental IDM freaks like myself, so I dug really deep and put together a 1-hour set that was sure to melt minds. I knew that it wouldn't be a problem going super hard before Eprom as he had a huge A/V show and his tunes are untouchable when it comes to brain-melting moments. As some of you may remember, I opened up my DMs on twitter/instagram and asked the community to send me their finest dubs. After over 100 DMs, I was blessed with an incredible amount of amazing music. I ended up playing a bunch of the tunes that were sent to me on NYE. I dropped dubs from Gaszia, BoyNotHome, Sepia, So Far So Bad, Vanfleet, Aleph, SCJ, and Slowrolla and they all went offfffffff.

(Exclusive live video for patreon!)
https://youtu.be/Z_Sc0_KWh5A

(Post-show snap with Eprom, Chee and Mace)

Sander/Eprom played an amazing set that was truly awe-inspiring, and absolutely fucked with everyone's heads. If you haven't checked his new-ish album Syntheism out yet, dont sleeeeep! I attached some vids I caught of his show below.

Aiiiiiit thats it for now. Stay tuned next week for a couple more exclusive tunes, plus details on COMPO_2 (Jan 28th at noon PST!)

Peace
T