Speedy J
at the Gashouder for Awakenings Festival 2020 | Online weekender
The lockdown stream era was truly a bizarre time. Here we have a techno legend playing to an entirely empty Gashouder, while thousands of us sat in our living rooms in our pyjamas, frantically typing fire emojis in the chat. We were all desperately trying to recreate the Berghain vibe in our kitchens, clutching lukewarm tinnies and pretending the cat was a bouncer. Proper weird, but absolutely essential. The Speedy J at the Gashouder for Awakenings Festival 2020 set is a brutal, uncompromising laser-storm fired into the cavernous, empty void of the legendary venue.
This Speedy J live set is an absolute battering ram, relentlessly punishing the empty room at 139.5 BPM. Locked into the 12A Camelot key, the Techno energy arc is an industrial onslaught, characterized by distorted kicks, frantic hi-hats, and terrifying modular synth squelches. His mixing is surgical and chaotic, blending tracks so aggressively it feels like the sound system is physically attacking you. The Speedy J Awakenings Festival 2020 tracklist is an absolutely unhinged crate-digger masterclass. Dropping Shygirl & Boys Noize alongside absolute trance classics like Tiësto's "Traffic" and Alice Deejay's "Better Off Alone" in a dark techno set is a level of trolling we can only respect.
He kicks off the digital destruction with an aggressive "Unknown" opening track to wake up the living room ravers. The absolute peak of madness hits during a gargantuan 23-minute edit of Ultra-Sonic's "Check Your Head". He finally pulls the plug on the chaos with the bizarre closing track, MoneOnDaBeat's "Lonely", leaving the internet ravers properly shell-shocked.