Manning Bar in Sydney hosted a pair of heavy hitters in the world of trap, bass, and RnB, with Mr Carmack and Joe Kay on Tour in Australia. Montell 2099 was on warm up duties, with the Kiwi sticking to the theme of bass heavy trap beats. He’s sets and stage craft are getting better, having seen him before the Sam Gellaitry gig last year.
Come 11pm it was time to get serious. Soulection founder Joe Kay gets two weeks off from his genre defining radio show each year, and he spends them touring (talk about love and commitment to music and spreading the sound). Given the supporting and headlining acts, I was afraid we would be seeing mainly hype and trap bass from him, but as always, Joe did his own thing his own way, and crushed it going all over the show musically speaking from trap, to balle funk, to house, to garage, to deep cuts and flips of RnB classics to reggae.
Kaytranada flips were in abundance (Be your girl, uno), with the Canadian producer a genre defining friend of Joe Kay. Only Jarreau Vandal is able to do more musical direction changes or blend genre’s so well together. Prowling the decks in an open panther embossed peach shirt, Kay uses hip hop instrumentals (like snoop dogs ‘drop it like its ho’t or ‘xplosive lady’ a reedit of 50 cents classic) to slow down into garage, or into bass rnb. Justin Timberlake re-edits and blends into Missy Elliot into Hiatis Kaiyote. We are talking Djing with ADHD. So many flips, edits, cuts, and rewinds. Playing a couple of his own slow down edits as well, he is a master of this very niche genre and it is an honour every time being able to see him play.
Mr Carmack took over from 12:30am and the army of Post Malone bowling shirts that were baying for bass were not left disappointed. Dropping bangers and bass heavy trap beats, Mr Carmack can get a party from 0-100 in no time at all. Some of his bass heavy hitters such as ‘Watch Me’, or ‘DIMEPEICE122’ This was a pure DJ set, as often Carmack has a guitarist or trumpeter with him (he occasionally will whip the trumpet out himself). Mr Carmack often will drop in some of his more chilled out beats from his album ‘Original Sound’, or Daniel Cesar re-edits, these are often ones that I will connect more with, The a gentler, jazz and soul inspired beats. However, the whole show was a tight, bass heavy party. He has played lighter sets in the past, combining more instrumentals and live singing, but this was a tour and a party, one which it took some time to recover from.
P.S Sam Binga played the warm down and was dropping some absolute heaters. Grime, garage, 2 step. He crushed it for the 20 or 30 minutes I was there for. If this was a warehouse in the Inner West at 2am, it would have been packed and very sweaty. However this was Manning Bar, after a bass and trap heavy billing. A case of right man, wrong gig, as the crowed quickly dissipated. Shout out to Binga, you killed it.
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