BY FABIEN VOUILLON
Hot on the heels of his January gig at Cielo, Alexander Barck of Jazzanova, the six-member DJ/producer german collective, returned to the same intimate New York hotspot on Thursday April 13th for another night of expertly mixed funk, broken beat, brazil, latin, soul and jazz music.
Known the world over for their mastery of the art of remixing, Jazzanova just released on their own record label Sonar Kollektiv, ‘The Remixes 2002-2005’, their second compilation of remixes, which won ‘compilation of the year’ at Gilles Peterson’s 2005 Worldwide awards. The New York connoisseurs of leftfield music made this a sold-out event and they were in for a treat.
Alexander showed us again why his ecletic, genre-bending sets made him one of the most respected and in-demand DJ on this planet.The Jazzanova spirit can be best summed up in a 20 minute span when Alex mixed a samba cover version of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Another Star’, a straight up latin jazz tune, a jazzy electro instrumental, Patrice Rushen’s Forget me knots and Cameo’s Strange, which opened the door for a broken beat/nu-dance set.
All along, Alex kept the crowd surprised, guessing and asking for more, but the cheers, applauses and whistles could have been stronger, and looking around the small but beautiful club, the culprit was obvious: David Resnick of the Love Intelligence Group. The VJ (video DJ)’s first appareance at Cielo was a hit with the crowd that could not get their eyes off of the huge screen displaying his video collage. While hugely popular in Europe and Japan, the VJ scene is only burgeoning in New York, and judging by the crowd’s response, it is here to stay.
But again, Alex stole the show with an uncompromising rare disco-funk set that got the crowd, including Danny Krivit (of Body & Soul fame), smiling and dancing in pure musical bliss. Throughout the evening, Alexander Barck connected the dots between musical styles, and, as usual in a Giant Step party, the crowd was as eclectic as the Dj set, and all music lovers, japanese hipsters and bankers alike left Cielo happy and satisfied. And now that you have family in New York, we hope to see much more of you, Alexander.
