Why They Aren’t Coming : A Matt Tong DJ Set in Jakarta Review

First thing that I’d like to state is that, this post is not so much of a hate speech compared to the Steve Aoki review that I wrote about a year ago. No, this is more about the coming of my acceptance of Jakarta.

And a review of November 21st 2009 Matt Tong DJ Set in Barcode, Jakarta.

On that night, we went out to check out Matt Tong DJ set at Kemang, actually, I was looking for a decent electro set in town. As some of you might not aware, electro is one of the marginalized genre in Jakarta. When you go clubbing in Jakarta, expect something like house or trance (assuming you’re not going on RnB night). I might be biased when talking about electro music, yes, it has been my preferred genre of dance music for the past of couple of years. Some people might not care about the music that they play in clubs, as long as they can get drunk, get laid, get high, and whatnots. Thing is, I do care. I care about the music, the crowd, and the DJs.

Arrived at the venue, Barcode, at about 930ish PM. DJ Riri was playing back then, pumping out barrages of house music, some are meh, some are okay. But anyway, wasn’t there for house music, so we waited and sucking cigs and had some beers. At about 1030ish, groups of people were circling the front part of the dance floor, turns out that Matt Tong himself appeared out of nowhere and people are asking for autographs. At 1100ish, Matt Tong took over the deck.

One thing about event organizers in Jakarta, is they really really love to put spaces and barricades between the deck and the crowds. In events that are not rave party, it is unnecessary to put barricades like that, why do you want to separate the DJ from the crowds? I believe that most people in Jakarta, especially the event organizers (?) often view the performing DJ as god. They are to be protected, to be put in front on a high stage. The way DJ performs should be in a cool-guy-autistic-like way, it should be just him and the deck.  I don’t know what’s been happening before I started going out, but man, that kind of perspective feels very wrong for me. By putting barricades like they’ve just instantly killed the interactivity that might happen between the DJ and the crowd. But to be fair, the crowds themselves should behave if the are to remove those spaces and barricades. No touching and shits. Touching the DJ won’t give you extra ten years of your life. Or make you smarter. Or enlarge your penis by 10 centimeters.

So yeah, Matt Tong took the deck. He started pumping out electro tracks. Awesome ones, ranging from classic like MSTRKRFT’s Bounce to newer one like Miike Snow’s Animal (don’t know whose remix, my bad). It was all good and I thought I’ve found what I’ve been looking for in Jakarta. A decent electro party, at last!

But there were something very wrong, and it felt like ticking bomb that is about to blast. Only a few people danced. My mind was suddenly transferred back to last year’s Steve Aoki. I don’t blame the crowds, but it was crystal clear that most of the crowds there didn’t get the music. And yes, you can see desperation in Matt Tong’s face. After about 45 minutes after he took the deck, the dream started to go downhill. Out of the sudden, he started playing house music, he played R Kelly’s Ignition, played some original band tracks, the mixes started to go all over the place. But whatever right? The crowd was all crazy when he stopped playing electro. This lasted for about 30 mins.

And then he started going into electro again, the crowds looked pretty warmed up, at least some more people were dancing to the music. When everything started to look (and sound) good again, the crowd started to die down. And his mixes went all over the place again. It wasn’t totally bad though, it’s just that his mixes didn’t have any flow, he was like trying to experiment what kind of music would move the crowd. He did play some of Bloc Party’s song, Banquet and Weird Science remix’ of Helicopter.

We went back home when he played Helicopter, I assume nothing interesting will happen in next few hours (tell me if something did happen back then), so we decided to call it a day.

Well, I admit this is not so much of a review, did a read proof just now, and I’ve read a concert review that is way better than this. But like I said before, this is something more like an acceptance, of me, to how people come and go clubbing here. Well, yes, nothing can be done I guess, and we’ll be missing out a lot of good electro artists coming. Well, wait, Soulwax is actually coming down to Jakarta on January 20th. Good luck with that, I feel like that it’s gonna be Steve Aoki disaster part 2.