Justin Martin
Friday, January 23, 2009
White Room, Miami
Better than: Anything I have heard live in quite a while.
Given the inordinately low temperatures in Miami last week, Friday turned out to be a fairly adequate night for clubbing alfresco in the White Room patio. By 11 p.m. you could hear the deep pulsating bass emerging from behind the walls of this tiny building and floating down North Miami Ave., slowly luring early comers inside.
First on the decks was PL0T resident DJ Mansur, a mainstay of the techno parties that rocked Friday nights at this venue all through 2008. White Room's vacant patio gradually filled up while he spun a soulful mix of stripped-down techy deep house, inciting the first bodies to stir across the empty dancefloor. DJ Strickly B took over sometime after midnight, blending in his own selection of phenomenally funky bass-driven tech house, as the dancing quotient gained momentum.
The patio was already packed and the crowd considerably energized by
the time Justin Martin came on and kicked the tempo up quite a few
massive notches. Knowing his music from MySpace, MP3s, and flimsy
household stereo speakers, nothing could have prepared me for the
brutal and mind-bending sonic assault of his live performance.
At
first I didn't even notice he had insidiously taken over the decks, but
I was involuntarily tuned in as a monstrously intense rattling bass
frequency overcame the club's especially pristine Dynacord Cobra sound
system. I had never heard anything like this before in my life. I must
have stood there motionless in stunned jaw-dropping awe for the first
half hour of this performance.
There is no denying the sheer
manic fervor among his entire White Room audience as Mr. Martin
delivered a ground-shaking techno set that virtually stampeded through
every frequency in the sound spectrum and every stylistic flair known
in EDM. From the hypnotic squelches of acid house and flamboyant synth
stabs of electro-funk, to the lowdown gut-throbbing basslines of
dubstep. An inspiring and stellar performance by all accounts, and the
crowd's clamor continued well into early Saturday morning.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: I was genuinely blown away by the quality of music that night, and that does not happen nearly often enough.
Random Detail: It
seems like practically every other person I met and chatted with among
the crowd that night was a DJ or EDM producer, in addition to a
hardcore Martin fanatic. Justin Martin is obviously a DJ's DJ and White
Room Fridays home to clubbers in the know.
By the Way:
Justin Martin will be headlining the unmissable Dirtybird and
Mothership WMC 2009 party along with Claude VonStroke and a truly
spectacular international lineup
