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Stephan Bodzin @ Brown Alley

Author: Danni Borg
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
I wanted to review The Likes Of You Present: Stephan Bodzin mostly because I am massive Bodzin fan. Not only of his production releases, but of his high energy, tough as hell DJ sets, and at this party we were getting both.

I had only seen Bodzin play once before, last year in October and he blew me away with not only his track selection, amazing ability to totally mess with the crowd, but also with his enthusiasm in every aspect to what he was doing. Seeing him get so into it made us get into it all the more.

I haven't been to many Likes Of You Parties, but they have been constantly bringing quality acts to Melbourne so I knew this night would be full of quality tunes. We arrived at Brown Alley around 1am and Gavin Keitel was warming up the crowd effortlessly as he always does. The tunes were great but I wasn't too sure about the crowd. There was a much younger crowd than I was expecting, lots of big hair & tight jeans and I'm not talking just from the girls.

By the time Bodzin took the stage at 2.30am the dancefloor became a hot, sweaty mosh pit, and you could barely breathe let alone dance. Being a bit of a veteran of the Melbourne scene I was amazed at how the younger generation acted, they weren't displaying any form of P.L.U.R that Melbourne is known for, well 'was' known for, but maybe I'm just showing my age here.

After being stepped on & elbowed a few too many times we decided this wasn't going to work, especially as the crowd wasn't really dancing, it was like they all just wanted to push to get as close as they could to Bodzin which I didn't really understand-

So we decided to try and find a better spot where we could breathe & still take it all in, so we moved our crew upstairs & found a cosy spot above the stage.

This was OK for a while but as Bodzin really started to warm up with his live set we were finding it just wasn't loud enough up there and we wanted to get amongst it. So we braved downstairs again and ended up finding a fantastic spot to the left of the stage under the stairs.

By this time I think the novelty had worn off for some of the kids, they got close enough, got too hot and moved back and the crowd was really getting into it at this stage.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Bodzin's live set, I had heard mixed reviews and had heard that he can sometimes get a little too technical and minimal, but this wasn't the case at all. His live set was funky tough techno the way it should be played, not boring in any aspect and not too minimal that you are wondering 'where is this going'-

By the time he started his DJ set, he had the crowd eating out of his hands and we were no exception, at certain stages of his set I found myself laughing at how ridiculously good the music he playing was and that I didn't want it to end. The tunes kept getting bigger and bigger and the crowd was losing it, it was a lot of fun!

We had also found some really cool guys to bond with who were loving the music just as mush as we were and this changed my opinion of the young crowd, 'Maybe they did know what they were on about-'

All this aside Bodzin played a absolutely amazing live and DJ set that I wish was recorded so I could re live it in my lounge room over and over. By the time he had finished, my legs were so sore and I was completely exhausted from 4 hours of straight dancing. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even stay until the end of Mike Callander & Safari's set which was absolutely amazing by the way. These guys shouldn't be underrated and picked up perfectly from where Bodzin left off. Playing Beanfield - Tides was a great touch too, one of my favourites!!

Good work to The Likes Of You for bringing Melbourne yet another quality act that we could really sink out teeth into, looking forward to the next.


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