Vancouver’s Gossip Nightclub was host to a weekend of seismic corruption as Excision and the X-Tour dubstepped into the rainy city with the sole agenda of blowing minds and quite possibly eardrums. If you’ve been to the Shambhala Music Festival in recent years, you may have heard the Canadian dance party DJ and producer (also known as Jeff Label), blasting a name for himself out of the interior BC mountainside, since 2008. Kicking off a North American tour in his hometown province, he will continue to tour relentlessly until the end of April.
Selling out the original Sunday show date slated for Vancouver, a second show was announced for the Saturday before, likely to the relief of weekend warriors who feared hung over and sleepless Mondays at the office. SCENE IN THE DARK however stayed up late on a “school night” to check the buzz of the latter show. We’re brave like that.
The bass line tremors could be heard blocks away from the club. No joke, there could’ve been a free party in the parking lot for those who don’t mind the odd transient asking for change and the incessant rattling of building vents, window panes and whatever else the intense vibrations set off – car alarms? A wailing vehicle may actually have mingled quite nicely with the sonic fury going on inside (and incidentally outside) Gossip.
For the complete X-Tour experience however, one must buy a ticket and enter into the venue at your own risk, diving bravely into the “100,000 watts of sound” and “mind blowing X-Vision video and lighting” as was touted on the bright posters pasted around town.
Mind blowing is not an exaggeration; to be quite frank, I was kind of worried I might have an aneurysm in there! The effect on your senses is surreal and, at times, down right nauseating. Every breath of humid air reverberated down the esophagus, then back up and out in a belch of bass. The last dubstep show I went to was Skrillex at the PNE Forum, and I could feel the vast difference made by venue size. Normally a big fan of smaller locales, in this case I have to say bigger is better. There was nowhere to go for a little relief from the awesome intensity of the perpetual electronic eruption orchestrated by the shadowy DJ who was dwarfed by massive, looming X’s. It was very overwhelming.
I watched as glowing painted people tribal danced in the black light, feeling as if I was witnessing some futuristic apocalypse. The only difference being these weird alien life forms were smiling and laughing, seeming totally oblivious to the end of the world, or at least a world where they retained their hearing.
The extraterrestrial-robot dubstep paired with a theatrical stage reminiscent of a demonic Transformer logo had me convinced I was caught in the midst of an inter-galactic war zone with nowhere to hide. But, while I may have come away from my hour on the X-Tour somewhat shell shocked, the full house of very baby faced party go’ers that night at Gossip seemed completely in-sync with the sensory over load. I suppose it’s just another way we as human beings have chosen to overindulge; like everything else we do on this planet, we want it double up-sized and hazardous to our health. Excision and the X-Tour in this case are just what the doctor ordered… along with a new set of hearing aids!
Review by: Lauren Dallas | Photos by: Michael Caswell
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