Tag Archives: Techno

Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Robyn & Röyksopp @ Wolf Trap — 8/21/14

Somewhere in synthpop heaven, a match was made. Norwegian duo Royksopp would party with Swedish indie diva Robyn, and beautiful music would be made.

It happened most spectacularly on Royksopp’s 2009 album, Junior, with the disco smash “The Girl and the Robot,” which between Royksopp’s hooky synths and Robyn’s pleading voice captured a perfect crystalized moment in dancefloor history. Nominally, the song is about a woman in love with someone who may not return her affections, or at least is not as warm as she would like. The video fetishes technology and strobe lights.

And introducing the song gave Robyn a perfect opportunity to declare her raison d’etre before its performance by a happily reunited Robyn and Royksopp Thursday night at Wolf Trap.

“Love is a lot of work. Love is hard,” she said.

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Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Moby (DJ Set) @ U Street Music Hall — 1/19/13

Moby performs in Biarritz, France, in 2011 pelukxs

Four years ago, Moby teamed up with DC staple Will Eastman to perform put on a DJ show at the 9:30 Club in honor of President Obama’s first inauguration. It ran late into the night, but the power went out on the block sometime around 1:30am, shutting everything down for about an hour.

For a bit, Moby tried to gamely improvise by turning a trash can into a drum. The effort sort of fizzled out after a manic 15 minutes or so. As We Love DC reported at the time, “many left dejected and impatient before…the power restoration.” (I too was there and about half the room departed.) But once more space opened up, the remaining people really cut loose with some dancing.

So it was something of a logistical success for Eastman to bring Moby back in a much more intimate venue at U Street Music Hall this past Saturday. Everything ran like clockwork and the sold-out show offered plenty of comfortable elbowroom for people to mill about and check out the scene.

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Entertainment, Interviews, Music, We Love Music
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Q&A with Paul Oakenfold

Paul Oakenfold
photo courtesy of MSOPR.

Paul Oakenfold is arguably the biggest dance music DJ and producer in the world. The closest thing to a household name that the hardcore dance world is likely to ever produce, Oakenfold has been a major force in electronic dance music for twenty years. Rising from a basement bar in Covent Garden at the end of the 80’s with an arsenal of Acid House and cross-genre Ibiza DJ stylings he went on to conquer the London nightclub scene and then the world. They simply do not make DJs bigger than Paul Oakenfold.

Oakenfold is bringing his Facelift Tour to the 9:30 Club on Tuesday November 23. He took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with me about his career and the current landscape of dance music.

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