Mr Elephant Presents

A massive shout to everyone who came into our room on saturday night at the aforementioned Longest Day Festival! It’s certainly fair to say that you (and the Mr Elephant djs and vj), created one of the most electric atmosphere’s ever seen in the back bar at the Hare and Hounds, and huge thanks once again to Bazaar for making it all happen.

Sound setup was handled expertly by Andy the  sound man, with our resident visual artist Liam (and Charlie), setting up a huge video screen ready for his inspiring projections. Emma and Bazaar had invited Zen and a tarot reader down, and there was a friendly masseur who gave great head massages.

Pyn made the place look more beautiful with some nice bits supplied by Emma, and we welcomed Justin from Loafers Lounge back, who kicked things off with his beautiful blend of diverse sun kissed electronica and downtempo.

By 7pm the back bar was unusually busy, and it time to invite Olly Badaboon, (our “newcomer dj” from our first Mr Elephant event at Epic in March 2007), back to see where he was at musically. Just off a plane from Ibiza, Badaboon has certainly been honing his skills, and took over the decks with some new and classic funk and some choice scratching, raising the tempo and shaking some asses, as the place filled up, (and Chris the chef got his head massaged!)

8.30 came and the mighty Dani C from Funkatronic was up.

Dani is a great dj we’ve been wanting to invite down for a while now, and it certainly became apparent why, when after a few records, he had people coming up and shaking his hand and pulling all sorts of shapes to his summer and latino style house! A sure sign of an old pro

While our rooms was free entry all night, the two rooms upstairs, hosted by Bazaar, and B-Music were open from 8pm and were £7 quid entry to cover a great line up of musicians and djs. We managed to sneak a peek at around 10.30, when dropping up a backup deck (thanks Rob!) after one of the hired ones had gone down. While there wasn’t many people around yet, it looked fantastic, and full of promise to go off in true solstice style, with a bevvy of instruments adorning both stages.

Back downstairs however it was (fortunatly) rammed to capacity and time for our resident dj Marc Reck to take to the decks. The dancefloor was now nicely full thanks to some great mixing from Dani, and Marc dropped his diverse blend of cut up trip hop, classic soul, and upbeat swing, which got the place shouting, and the people smiling.

It was nice to see some scratching from Marc too, before he raised the pace into his more familliar breakbeat territory. Liams blendstate’s visuals and intelligent use of colour set the ever changing mood with real skill.

By 11.30pm, the back bar was now full to capacity, with people from the more chilled out front bar apparently taking it in turns to come and have a dance! This all paved the way for a return set from our friend (and headliner from our first event), Mr Boogie Dave.

Boogie most known for his pioneering dubstep, and of course the legend that is Drop Beats Not Bombs, threw down an amazing set of booty breaks, which got the crowd shouting and jumping, and ended with the most amazing remix of Rage against the Machine’s classic “Killing in the Name Of” track.

It was great to see such a huge reaction, as Boogie is a great and well deserving dj, and sometimes dubstep can be a little hard to grasp for some dancefloors.

12.30 upstairs, and there was some great music being played by some of Birmingham’s most talented musicians. There was some apparently some confusion as to who was actually playing as the flyers had been printed early, but we imagine that it was suitably going off, and the price had been thoughtfully dropped to reflect the time of night.

Unfortunatly we couldn’t go and see for ourselves, as 12.45 downstairs, the temperature had raised to sweating temperature! Dani C was back on the decks and by the time he dropped a huge remix of Cj Bollands Sugar Daddy, the whole place was on fire (literally!)

Handing over to Marc Reck for the last stretch, (who was so excited by this point he was bouncing around like Tigger on speed…or Marc on Staropramen!). Marc raised the pace with each record, quickly switching into Drum and Bass, and igniting the crowd into a jumping bass driven mass sinaglong!

All in all a most memorable night, and an atmosphere created by the local people in a local pub that will be very difficult to forget.

The full set of pictures we’ve got so far are here (thanks marc), and there was also a roving professional camera man (who had a proper camera, and was asking people to pose, etc) so there should be some good ones on the way.

We’ll post them as soon as we get a copy, and if you want to be notified when they are up, click on the rss subscribe button, and they will be delivered automatically to your chosen rss reader.

Wishing you all a most glorious rest of summer.

One love

Mr Elephant x