California Heatwave - video, photos and audio

By Gabriel_Heatwave |
Sunday 01 February 2009 |
2 comments |

Just before Christmas we crossed the pond to play in California for the first time, at Tormenta Tropical in San Francisco.

I posted the photos from the night last month and and this week I uploaded a video of our set:

The monthly night is promoted by Disco Shawn and Oro11, the guys behind the Bersa Discos cumbia label. Like Greg Scruggs points out on his Beat Diaspora blog, the posters are great:

The party was a lot of fun too; great tunes all night and an enthusiastic crowd that was receptive to all kinds of music from cumbia to dancehall to funky house.

Unfortunately we only managed to record the beginning of our set, which Rubi Dan kicked off by vocalling instrumentals like Come Around, Roll It Gal and the Crookers remix of Day N Nite:

MP3: Rubi Dan & Gabriel Heatwave - Live in San Francisco

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Paul Devro from Mad Decent played a wicked set taking in Baltimore club, kuduro, dancehall and more and generally proved to be a hyperactive one man entertainment machine.

Diplo was also in town for the Mad Decent power summit and played a couple of records - or at least got involved with the mixer - during Paul's set:

The Bersa Discos DJs set the dancefloor alight with cumbia that had the crowd skanking out from the moment the doors were opened. Here's a snippet of Disco Shawn playing just before we came on:

MP3: Disco Shawn - Live at Tormenta Tropical

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When we were wandering around town the day after the gig I spotted this street sign and thought sheeeeeeeit, I'd better take a photo:

I took a couple of other street pictures in Chinatown which my mate Sam featured this week on his Ghost Signs blog documenting fading 'brick ads' around the world.

Shouts to Shawn and Gavin for inviting us out there as well as Paul Devro, Chief Boima, Diplo, Kid Kameleon, Angel, Rachel, Jasper, Maneesh from Surya Dub, DJ A and everyone else I've forgotten to mention cos I left it so long to get this post up! Hopefully we'll be back in the States before long...