I’m just finishing up a long weekend in Montreal, the City of High Tolerance for White-People Dreadlocks. Whenever I take a trip to another city, I invariably arrive at or near the beginning of a live-music dry spell, and the past couple of days were no exception. But Friday I did end up at this new club, Gymnase, and caught a pretty en fuego set by local DJs Megasoid and Sixtoo.
Sixtoo threw down a bunch of decent dancehall, which was a treat for me, as Chicago seems to have a deep-seated inability to get down with anything remotely dancehall outside of Sean Paul, so I only ever hear it in clubs when out-of-towners come spin. If you’re curious, Jamaica is doing things to “This Is Why I’m Hot” that make the original seem trifling in comparison.
Megasoid’s playlist was a lot like what you’d find in any hipster-ish sort of club in any city around the world—some Jay-Z throwbacks, a couple more recent rap jams, a grip of Ed Banger bangers—but dude is niiiice to the tracks. While most DJs see Serato mostly as a way to avoid lugging around heavy-ass crates of vinyl, Megasoid uses the whole digital interface thing to chop, flip, and twist on the fly, remixing in real time and generally turning even worn-out tracks into bananas central.
It was Sixtoo and Megasoid’s first night at Gymnase, and the crowd was pretty sparse (although, strangely, almost 100 percent female). The duo is better known for hosting illegal outdoor happenings, like the one captured in the following video. It looks fun as hell: