Upcoming concerts Past concerts reviews
Concert dates and locations are in the following form: Date Event (optionally with an additional description, preceded by a hyphen) at Venue, City.
The so-called 'Droeffeest' is an annual and evergrowing party in Droevendaal near Wageningen, originally a field temporarily housing a number of students, but grown into what is by some considered a independent state. This year it celebrates the 26th birthday of this complex. Droeffeest will feature two outdoor stages, several bands and djs, and places two eat and drink, and small activities. About 600 people are expected to visit.
At 16:00, the festival is officially opened. Atomsk will begin their set at 22:00 and play until the main festival has ended, at 23:00. After that the party goes on indoors.
More information, such as the rest of the line-up, can be found on http://www.droevendaal.nl/
Concert dates and locations are in the following form: Date Event (optionally with an additional description, preceded by a hyphen) at Venue, City. Also note that all concerts from Atomsk so far were located in the Netherlands.
There seems to be a pattern in our bookings; we seem to get invitations when we don't expect any. I certainly never expected a call from the people from Unitas again, but it came anyway, and they asked us to play at a large festival no less! The annual festival commemorates the capitulation of the German troops, which meant the liberation of the Netherlands at the end of the second World War in May 1945, and honors the veterans who fought defiantly for freedom. Approximately 80,000 people visit Wageningen this day each year, not for a small part to enjoy the many bands on stages spread all over the city. We were to play at one of the two Dense Architecture stages, as first act in the line-up.
Since we returned from the last gig we had a little time to improve on a few technical bits and add new material. We agreed on focusing on a more intense, more serious and more uniform style, which involved leaving out some quieter and softer parts and adding the latest productions, which fitted quite nicely. One big step forward was implementing a few realtime software limiters and compressors, so that the volume would remain at a nearly constant level. Last and ofcourse least (another recurring characteristic) was practicing the set and the new techniques. Which made the last few days before the actual gig absurdly stressful - the night before it felt like a triple homicide attempt. As if short of being extremely tired weren't enough, the weather expectations made us believe it would be raining all day long. It didn't matter, since nothing was going to stop us. DO YOU HEAR ME, STUPID UGLY CLOUDS?!
After two hours of driving we arrived rather early, so after dumping our equipment we took this opportunity to visit the city center. OH! Did I already tell you it was a brilliant sunny cloudless day? The forecast was sooo wrong, lucky us. When we were back from our little stroll it was time to unpack, set up the hardware and doing a soundcheck. A cable turned out to be broken and there was no replacement, so there were only two speakers instead of four active besides the numerous subwoofers. A few visitors had already arrived, so we played a few older songs as sort of warming up while waiting for the other two speakers to be connected. But waiting turned out to take too long, so we just unplugged our monitor speakers and rerouted a couple of wires to a different mixer. Quick fix, who needs to hear what they play anyway? ;)
No crowd was going to dance on our music, we thought, especially after hearing that in the previous editions only few people came in the early hours. But as soon all subwoofers and speakers we're connected, we started rocking. Imagine a square that four speakers are encompassing, one at every edge. Aside from a few sitting on the subwoofers and a few more at the far back there was almost nobody, but after a few songs the square was filled and soon even outside that square filling the streets! Yeah, that was crazy stuff, very cool. Really, they came out of nowhere, or so it seemed to me when I looked up from my screen during the song 'Berserk'. Must have been more than 200 people, from every age. The crowd responded very well to the harder parts, so we will try to keeping in mind a more dance oriented audience instead of a listening audience when we are gigging. When the hour was over they shouted for more. We did continue for a while but finally decided it was time to stop and let the djs take over. Anyhow, big up for anyone involved including the Wageningen massive in the square and all over the street since this was our best gig yet.
We've had a little break during winter and spring, until one night, visiting Koornbeurs, we met one of the producers of The Longplayers who told us we were scheduled as support act on their concert in Speakers, only two weeks away.
After we returned home from the last gig in Unitas we decided to never carry mini-tower computers ever again, so there were plans buying a substitute set-up, which we did a week before the actual concert. I chose to get a laptop with a high quality external soundcard. A few days were spent installing software and figure a couple of things out.
Speakers is a club with a fantasic soundsystem, remembering from the first - and second last - time I visited it. I was 16 years old back then, one of the live acts that day. Late as we were, minutes only after we finally got the new set ready on the laptop, we were received by the same friendly, but initially worried stage manager we met on the Enjoi Finals. That worry vanished as soon as he saw how fast we got our hardware up and runnning. The doors were opened, the DJ started and we ventured onto the way to our own backstage room, where we would find a little refrigerator richely filled with bottles of water, jus d'orange and a tray of beer, not to mention the apples, bananas and the collection of miniature candy bars we didn't forget to stuff Nick's jacket full with on the table next to it. The room was decorated with one mirror and maybe two posters, draped over clothing hangers above the benches we sat on were towels we weren't sure of were washed and merely looked used, or were dirty and ready for laundry collection. We didn't touch them.
We started a little later than was planned. Although a relatively big name was present on the poster, the crowd we hoped for wasn't there. Feeling extraordinarily nervous, uncomfortable with the software, so I welcomed a couple more minutes. Technically speaking we had a new approach, using just one computer and not allowing pauses between songs. In theory it worked, but in practice it was just a hair away from disaster. Just before leaving home I found out some settings needed to be switched after each song, so I told myself over and over again that it was the least thing to forget on stage. When we finally kicked in most people stood away from the front, still too early and too shy to walk away from the back of the room, even though a lot of them were friends we invited. Once we started the first thing I noticed was that our new equipment was a big improvement in terms of sound quality . On the other hand, I couldn't concentrate on the music but had to keep my mind on the software's configurations, already knowing that next time we'd better had found a solution or I'd go crazy. Another issue was the volume which we had to adjust manually on a table bouncing up and down on every bassdrum. Figure out what happens then.
When we were done people told us what they thought. Everyone came with positive reactions, although warning us for those drops in volume. The stage manager even confessed he is a great admirer of our band. In the end we were happy to have been there, we've learned a lot testing the new hardware and used that knowledge in giving the best performance up to the moment of writing this: Dense Architecture.
We got in touch with the people over in Wageningen through a friend of Renier we call EJ who had been DJ'ing in that place before. Great, an opportunity to get known outside the hometown!
Well, it didn't turn out so well. We could have had plenty of time before the actual evening, but until the day before we didn't even know for sure we would actually be part of the line-up. At first we even wanted to cancel the whole thing - I mean, it was on the other side of the country! We decided to go anyways, in the end it's always a good thing to get known a little better and get some stage experience. It would also be the first time we'd use one computer instead of two. Our decision came a bit late though, so we really had to hurry getting the set ready.
After roughly a two hour trip we arrived at the venue named Unitas, a place very similar to Koornbeurs: run by mostly students with an affinity for underground/goth/techno/cult things. We unpacked our stuff, connected everything, did a little dance in between, did a sound check and waited for the doors to finally open.
And boy, did they open and did masses of people crawl inside through the tiniest of cravices, bash each others heads in to get in front of the speakers...! well no. In fact, I'd be surprised if there were more than twenty. The first DJ, a local one, started spinning electro, too bad he didn't get that "impressive crowd" going. When we started even half of those ten that were inside left, probably because of the increase in dynamics (meaning that the differences between softer passages and louder passages are much much bigger at the cost of a lower average volume). It's a problem we didn't address before, we took it as a side effect of playing live: on stage, a band just doesn't sound as loud as on cd.
That the floor was almost deserted gave us a chance to experiment with songs we made in the few weeks before or never did live, skipping the vocals since it would only make us look silly. When we played 'Skylines' people were running away yelling it was too loud, while we personally found it was too quiet although we felt the building rumbling with the deep kicks, which we were told of later they shouldn't have been any louder or something bad might have happened. On the other hand, a couple of nu skool breaks songs that Nick had produced made people dare not only to enter again, but also to do some real dancing!
We ended the set with a big thumb up from the guy in charge, who booked us again a few months later to play on Dense Architecture.
Most definately the best thing this night was during and after EJ's fantastic electro set, when we used up all the free food/free drinks vouchers, enough for a couple of triple scotch whiskys - as a matter of fact those vouchers were probably worth more then the money we earned! A lot of fun for us, less for Renier, who had to remain sober to drive our drunk asses back home.
Atomsk was booked as headliner at the annual New Era - Owee edition, alongside well-known local techno, electro and drum 'n bass djs. During the Owee, short for Opening Week, new students are being familiarized with the city and its students' unions in a way they probably like most, meaning drinking lots of beer and going heavy on the partying. Although there was a lot of competition from other night life events it was actually very crowded in the Koornbeurs, the residence of New Era - and while being the most underground club in the area that's quite something.
When the doors opened the place was quickly filled and the first dj began his set. After we got the signal we began the show with the easily recognizable 'Sidman/Digicore', which definitely always draws the attention. We wanted to work slowly towards a higher tempo, after all we planned a 45 minute gig, but the crowd wasn't very impressed by the softer material. We chose to drop some songs and cut to the chase by calling upon the mighty four-on-the-floor elektro track 'the brine' which I had just created, followed by our heaviest drum 'n bass material. Supposedly the most extreme part of the set, Nick's modification of 'MPU' at 178 bpm, got us some ppl yelling to going even harder! In between we announced Nick's birthday but the elektrovox were only poorly understood. We finished the set with time well over one hour and the remains of a joint found on Nick's computer case.
The finals of the Podium Enjoi contest at the Agathaplein in the historical center of Delft, otherwise known as the Prinsenhof. Once again we had pressed ourselves hard to come up with new material, such as the synthpop track 'Laser'; which you can find in the music section and 'Circuit', a hard edge techstep/neurofunk/electro crossover. Unfortunately we had some problems connecting some of our equipment so we started later than a lot of people wanted to wait for.
In the end we didn't win but fortunately we became runner-up, earning us a booking at the local A-status pop music podium Speakers. We did get to play there eventually, after the Longplayers asked us to play at their concert. Not truely a booking, so we never actually collected the prize, but oh well... perhaps it was better this way. Go to the review of Future Phunk, April 2004
Although we had just formed I decided to force some motivation by signing up for a contest. A deadline is often the best working condition for ppl like me, and well, it turned out to be extremely stimulating indeed. In two weeks we had programmed enough material for a live set of over 20 minutes - and enough for sore brains, eyes and ears for days.
There were three qualifying rounds in the Podium Enjoi contest, one each for hiphop/rnb, pop/rock and dance/dnb. In contrast to the other two rounds it was kinda quiet in our one. When we began there were about 20 ppl, most of them brought-along friends of the djs that played before us. Just when we had finished did it became more crowded, only partially because night life was only just beginning.
In the end we won this round; the jury liked the originality and creativity of our sound, and the fact that we aren't djs but producers, meaning we were the only act that actually made music ourselves.