Ryan Xristopher's best and worst of Decibel 2010

Overall it was a fantastic five days!

Here's a quick list of my favorites and not-so-favorites. The full report and explanations will be up soon.

Much respect to the Decibel crew and all of the artists and performers there - it was a great inspiration!


Best Overall Shows:
Lorn
Mary Anne Hobbs

Best Sound in a Venue during a Show:
Carl Craig
Modeselektor
Optical 1

Best Vibe:
Mary Anne Hobbs – 1st 10 rows of people
Lorn – 1st 15 rows of people
Lusine – The whole dance floor
Ikonica / Starkey – The downstairs dance floor
Truckasaurus – The front of the dance floor

Best Music:
Lusine
The 10 minutes of the FlyLo show where it was just him playing

Best Lights and Visuals during a Show:
Carl Craig
Lorn
Optical 1

Best Dancing Tunes:
Ikonika
Monty Luke
Carl Craig

Best Surprises:
Lorn
Optical 1
Truckasaurus
Fax
Ikonika

Worst Disappointments:
FlyLo’s band
Pepe Bradock instead of Cassy
The sound during Monolake and Luke Hess sets

Worst Show:
Mount Kimbie
- I have to say this one just didn't do it for me at all. The music felt awkward, mistimed, and unconnected with the crowd there. The sound levels were way off - it sounded like bass soup in a tar pit; I was really struggling to find the music in it for the first 10 minutes. Maybe it got better though, because I took off after 15 minutes or so - so maybe it warmed up eventually?

Worst Sound:
Monolake - the quad sound was a great idea in theory, but I can't be the only one know noticed that the back left channel was broken? Like driving in a car with a flat rear tire that was falling off ...
Luke Hess - right when he came on, something went wrong with the sound in the room and it never got any better.
Kyle Hall
Mount Kimbie

Worst Music:
Mount Kimbie
Pepe Bradock - the first track he played was extremely off-putting; literally a good third of the dancefloor left within a minute of him transitioning in. It was a bad replacement for Cassy.

So that's a quick summary of the bests and questionables; but overall it was a brilliant time, and everyone I know was thoroughly happy with almost every show they went to.

-ryan xristopher