Let it now be publicly stated prior to this review that without a shadow of a doubt the most defining story of 2010 in Washington, DC’s burgeoning underground is the rise of the U Street Music Hall. No, it has absolutely nothing to do with the lineups or the performances, but the music itself. Sound waves at underground dance parties were never meant to bend, shake, wobble and emote they way they do when handled properly at the Temple of Boom. Playing U Hall makes average selectors and producers good, great selectors and producers excellent, and legendary selectors and producers appear to be deities when manipulating the controls and spinning the hottest tunes in the history of the world. Hearing a great record spun correctly at a packed U Street Music Hall is an invitation to cry, jump, wail and scream in appreciation of the sound of music.
Most underground selectors have at most a minimal understanding of how to navigate and manipulate the acoustics and sonic barriers of both a venue and a sound system. It’s not so much that the idea of “working” a record is a lost art, as much as it is a talent that has never needed to be learned, as most rock venues, African restaurants and hipster living rooms aren’t equipped with 20,000 watts of bass. Playing bloghaus on Bose speakers for drunken, Adderall altered post-teens in dive bars is a fun way to spend a night, but playing fully developed monster jams on a major league sound system is a progression that few are truly lucky enough to make when given the bloated glut of lost children turned scensesters turned attention starved partiers turned “DJs.” Having risen through the muck of the DC underground, the fact that Gavin Holland, Nacey and Steve Starks, the mixmasters of the Nouveau Riche party, are certified blog stars, the recognized future of underground dance sounds, and the crew behind the most wild and ridiculous of all of the events at U Street Music Hall is a testament to the fact that if one takes their craft as art and their skill as a calling card above all else, that full success is not only a necessity, but an inevitability.
If you believe the clicking red hearts to claim love of a song is the new Billboard, then Nacey is currently the #1 producer on planet Earth. At this very moment on Hype Machine (hypem.com), the 2009 TGRI DMV Song of the Year, the La Roux/Major Lazer Lazerproof mixtape featured remix of La Roux’s “Bulletproof” is the #1 song in the digital universe. If you think, like most who are in the know do, that Portugal’s Zombies for Money are making some of the cleanest produced and most sonorous remixes in the world right now, then the fact that their BEST work is on the debuted live at U Hall on Saturday night remix of his Philly club leaning “Git Em” clearly shows Steve Starks to be one of the most important producers anywhere right now. Starks and Nacey as a tandem also have an EP released on T & A Records, as well as an army of remixes forthcoming. And if you live in Washington, DC and aren’t aware of the ubiquitous Gavin Holland, (who is on the rise as a producer as well, working closely with the masterful Chris Burns) who is perpetually spinning at the hottest, newest and freshest parties in town, you live under a rock.
When their party, Nouveau Riche, was announced as moving to U Hall, it was the move that literally changed everything in DC’s underground. The party, with Gavin’s promotional excellence and Starks and Nacey’s quiet ascent to the throne was easily dominant when at DC9. It was the destination point and hot spot of the underground scene. When you looked at U Hall opening and housing Will Eastman’s Bliss, residencies for Nadastrom and Tittsworth, the reincarnation of deep house party Red Fridays, a Trouble and Bass monthly, the Beautiful Swimmers’ disco monthly The Whale, it seemed possible for the underground at other local spots to survive as fertile ground for DJs spinning bloghaus, techno, minimal and club music. Without inclusion of any representatives of the current scene, U Hall appeared to be great, but lacking any immediate relevance. Adding Nouveau Riche to the schedule, well, that put the icing on the cake and turned the venue from being a musical oasis into being an underground musical paradise. On the flipside, it allowed for bars and clubs once filled with an even mix of underground kids and Chad and Becky to now become all Chad, all Becky, and for DJs looking to have a claim to fame playing the last thirty tracks that Sheena Beaston said were “beastly” for a cadre of model thin hotties with unique fashion sense and the dudes who love them, well, let’s just hope Sheena and the crew like Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me,” Usher’s “OMG” and Soulja Boy’s “Pretty Boy Swag.”
To be frank, upon hearing just how absurdly great the sound was at U Hall, I wondered if the most junior members of the regular calendar would be able to step up and crank home runs to the same level that Will Eastman (whose Bliss has turned into Will making passionate love to a volcano of sound) and Tittsworth (who appears to revel in attempting to rupture the eardrums, deviate the septums, dislocate the testicles and fry, not melt the faces of club denizens) have. After last Saturday, I have seen the future top team of DC, and it’s Nouveau Riche. Steve Starks and Nacey dropping their new edits on the system and dancing like mirth filled schoolchildren in the booth while exalting like Benny Benassi at Red Rocks or David Guetta at Electric Zoo when seeing 300+ insane teens and post teens wilding out is a sight to behold. Their tracks have made the move from often great to consistently excellent, and it shows when they are pitted against U Hall’s epic soundscape. Gavin Holland as a selector and technical DJ has improved, and much in the same vein as Will Eastman, has stepped up his game to level up to bassquake and synth rodeo U Hall provides.
On the second Saturday of the month, U Hall turns into a rave the likes of which hasn’t been seen in DC proper in probably nearly a decade. It couldn’t happen to a crew of guys who deserve it more.
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