DJ Medhi – my new favourite person

October 29, 2007 at 5:47 pm (Uncategorized) (A-Trak, Dj Mehdi)

Myself and Nialler went down to the POD complex last night, after finally peeling myself away from the tube. It was a night put on by a well known rum brand, with Shock! DJs, Space Camp DJs, Claude von Stroke, Buraka Som Sistema and DJs A-Trak and Mehdi tag teaming, throughout the POD, Crawdaddy and Lobby Bar areas of the venue which has been like my second home this summer, mainly due to the fact that a lot of the other Dublin venues were closed, but also because the POD folk have been putting on some great gigs.

First impressions of the night were not good – caught a bit of the Space Camp DJs and the beginning of Claude vonStroke, but wasn’t in the mood for being bombarded by a giant screen set up behind the DJs by the rum company with a slide show of loads of trendy happy people drinking their product and looking like they’re having a great time.

Fuck OFF! The last thing that shit makes me want to do is buy the product. What it makes me want to do is grab a bottle of the rum, smash it in half over the bar, and run screeching towards the screen displaying the relentless ad and rib the fucker to pieces with the broken bottle. Argggh!

Phew. Zen.

I stuck to beer for the night. Buraka Som Sistema started putting things in the right direction, with their brand of funky tunes and MC warming us up. It was bloody freezing. Things picked up even more when we were joined by our Ed Banger loving buddies Miss Marcos and Speakertreatz, who were very much looking forward to DJ Mehdi’s set with A-Trak. DJ Mehdi is signed to Ed Banger, the French label home to that sometimes likeable little upstart Uffie and the more obviously talented DJ Feadz. A-Trak is from Montreal, is about 23, is a true scratch pervert and is Kanye West’s tour DJ.

I’m not too sure about the whole Ed Banger scene spawns – I can’t really relate to the image stuff and the cool kid persona shite as much as others seem to. I kind of thought the two DJs last night would be up their own holes really. DJing is a strange thing – often seeing famous DJs you don’t get the same buzz as from a live band. Obviously, that buzz is often missing from live bands’ performances too.

Anyway – pretty quickly into DJ Mehdi and A-Trak’s tag team set, it was obvious this was not just two lads getting paid a couple of grand to show up, play a few records, scratch a bit and fuck off home. This was a performance, and the enjoyment of the two DJs was infectious. The lads played for about an hour and a half, going through Justice, Daft Punk, Prince, New Order, a Feist remix (yahoo!) and loads more, and finishing up with flipping Junior Senior (flashback!).

I think DJ Mehdi gives a good indication where he’s coming from in this quote:

“I like to be the DJ, I love it so much. I love to try new things. You would never get into this business to be bored, or you would hope not.”

He was abosutely brilliant – dancing and smiling, loving every song that he played, his enthusiasm rubbing off on the too-cool-for-school (but not really) A-Trak, creating a buzz for the no doubt hungover crowd, relishing in the long weekend joy of not having to get up on Monday morning.

Here’s a video of DJ Mehdi featuring Chromeo with I Am Somebody. Check out his moves! What a cutie (insert winking emoticon here). Keep an eye on his myspace page to see when he’s coming back to Dublin. He’ll help you remember that DJs can be cool and fun. And he’ll make you dance.