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The Aftermath: UKF 3rd Birthday Bash

UKF Dubstep Event Review April 2012

Love them or hate them, you cannot ignore UKF’s impact on the EDM scene today, and no music has benefitted more from UKF’s promotion than Dubstep. With more than 1.3 million subscribers to date and still growing the Dubstep UKF Channel has outgrown the original UKF Drum & Bass channel with a ratio of more than 2:1, astonishing when you think of all of the heritage Drum & Bass proudly stands upon.

UKFs 3rd Birthday @ Proud2

UKF celebrated their 3rd birthday in style at Proud2 at the O2 in London (Formally the once awesome, Matter nightclub.)

We attended the belated celebrations to get our skank on to some down and dirty dubstep and drum and bass. this is how we got on in reverse order of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Bad – Mista Jam

I have a lot of respect for Mistajam and the work he has put into the scene, pushing the music we all love forward in a big way, but when it comes to live performances, im no where near as keen. Similar to the Bass Culture events, Mista Jam casually picks up the mic, and bigs himself up, while failing to really focus on the job in hand; offering big sounds via high quality mixes and bringing some energy to the venue. The random talking about his twitter feed siply killed that energy (for me at least). Your not on the radio now mate. Breakage also didn’t turn up and wasn’t replaced, poor show!

The Ugly – Knife Party

Now Knife Party are many things to many people; pioneers of a dirtier house sound, experimental in dubstep and drum and bass and are definitely one of the hottest EDM brands out there with some simply amazing tracks being played including two huge VIPs / Dubs. Every time I see Knife Party live the music is amazing and the venue goes simply crazy. Ministry of Sound was my favourite Knife Party performance for Dirty Dutch, not UKF’s 3rd birthday. Why? Because in part it wasn’t killed by random idiots deciding that the ENTIRE dance floor should be a huge mosh pit. Im all for a bit of rough and tumble, and it was a lot of fun at UKF, but I suspect that there were many people that wouldn’t agree, and this alone was wrong for the vibes that Knife Party typically bring. An excellent set, one duff mix and a load of trouble.

The Good – 16bit

Standing ovation for 16bit. A diverse and exciting set, I would personally rate the 16bit set the absolute best set of the night. The vibes were simply amazing, the crowds were moving at 5am still and to top it all off, an epic movie-style rock tune to conclude, what more could you want?! This really was a special set, and im so very glad that I was there to witness it.

Gutted I missed Koan Sound, Xilent and Hellfire Machina, but overall the night was well run apart from the security were unable to work out the fact that one staircase should be UP and one should be DOWN. Bring back the Matter staff for this type of event if you cant organise your staff to the new Proud2 Layout! Room 3 was also closed, I wasn’t too impressed with this either. And as for the chest-rattling sound that was quoted on the press releases, the sound system was up around 70% If I can talk to the person next to me and have a full blown, coherant conversation, its not loud enough!

What do you think?

Written by mAson

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Knife Party @ UKF 3rd Birthday (LIVE STREAM)