Clash of Titans highlights

[DJ Rock Well]

[DJ Rock Well]

All 12 were ranked based on previously submitted videos of their choice (numbers next to names), except Chmielix who was runner up to Vazee in the Geman/SMF the night before but filled in for the no show from Dubai. And of course Vazee who won the night before.

 

This seeding must've been fairly spot on as all 4 DJs who went straight to the quarters won them. Jack took out Saligo and Jose on the way to the final, Vazee took out Junk-33 (I think...) and IQ. Vazee and IQ had a no beat/drumming tie breaker round in their semi which I thought IQ won, but the judges didn't. Jack was just classic Jack TBH, it seemed like he was finding his groove more and more as it progressed and as ever he stayed tight in the pocket, sounded funky, clean and confident (although I'm sure he was more nervous than his cuts suggested).

 

This is from the FB live stream you can rewatch, although the sound isn't great and I assume they'll be proper vids coming out.

 

A lot of DJs were suffering more skipping than you'd usually expect and watching with headphones on, the decks on some rounds seemed to be just coming out of one channel. It was what was though and hopefully didn't hinder anyone too much, possibly sounded totally different there too?... regardless, the right man won on the night.

[savwar]

thanks a mill for the report.

I kinda wish he had the chance to battle IQ, seen as IQ has been slaying all competition for the last while. might have been a sweeter victory.

regardless. mega chuffed for him, and mega proud.

[Guest broke]

A lot of people I talked to at the first Skratcher event here in Melbourne thought that Saligo should have gone through, but I don't know... it was a close call. Most of the decisions must have been very tough.

[d00ban]

Gotta say, as someone who was there, Vazzee's drumming round sounded much better.

 

IQ's had no bass and just sounded kind of messy.

 

In contrast, Vazzee's was tight, on point and bassy. It really got the crowd going.

 

I heard IQ on the phone to one of his homies saying "they dunno what's dope" ha. Maybe it's true. I know at least a few here don't rate Vazzee's cuts as high as maybe the judges did. To be fair to him, they're decent for a battle as they're superpower cuts, aren't they?

 

Well done Jack though, gotta respect that!

[DJ Rock Well]

The stream had no bass for anything/anyone, beats and cuts were obviously being captured separately - beats sounded weak and distant and the cuts sounded like they were clipping so hard it might as well have been going through a slicer effect at times. All streaming based judgements were made whilst trying to guess what it really sounded like, which was obviously quite different! The only plus when L and R channels were cutting out was it reduced the overall levels and thus this.

 

Ive seen various complaints on FB over judging decisions and beats (there were a couple of questionable choices!).

 

With judging I think its always gonna be a contentious whenever you dont have one DJ totally own the the other on all levels. For instance, whats more important? Greater variety of cuts by a DJ whos nailing them cleanly but isnt really dazzling with any of them, or a DJ whos repertoire is clearly more limited but they totally owns every move they pull? To me, probably the latter but theres always exceptions and the real answer is probably its music and musicians battling is silly.

[DJ Rock Well]

Gotta say, as someone who was there

So so important. Thinking about it, every DJ battle of every variety I watched IRL came across as markedly different to any footage in retrospect*.

 

*except Chmielix vs Redmist at last years BBQ battle. That was both as good and hard to call stood in the audience as it was in footage afterwards.

[Guest Symatic]

it was a really tough battle - the equipment was shite (MIXARS turntables and mixers, brand new, badly calibrated ortofons for needles.)

 

IQ's drumming round deifnately suffered from the bad equipment, as it was the right-hand turntable that was the worst. So Vazee took him out with clean choppy drums.... Vazee went first and I thought "that was great but IQ could still win", but it didnt go his way at all, and his drums just came out muddled and dirty, which meant any funkiness was hard to pick out.

 

That meant Djackulate never got to face IQ cos they never were pitched against each other in the earlier rounds....

 

aside from the equipment being aweful, the beats were sometimes very tough - but anyone turning up to a WORLD final in skratching that hasn't bothered learning to cut on anything other than hip-hop and dubstep tempos is really setting themselves up to fail. I really respect the choices of difficult beats and weird rounds (eg acapella) because it throws people off guard. I dont wanna see the "best skratchers in the world" going for a walk in the park, they gotta earn that shit!

 

and jack worked hard as fuck to win - he turned up in the right frame of mind, and performed amazingly in a tough situation.

 

CONGRATULATIONS DJACKULATE YOU FUCKING BADASS!

[DJ Rock Well]

the equipment was shite (MIXARS turntables and mixers, brand new, badly calibrated ortofons for needles.)

 

That's exactly how it came across in the stream. Ortofon needles always need more bedding in than any others and everything I've seen of Mixars decks and mixers has made them look rubbish. In particular that every single time I've seen footage of a DJ cutting on a Mixars mixer, they've sounded worse than they normally do on any other fader. Where's a 56 and an old PDX when you need one!

 

I hear you on the beats and agree that no champ should be crowned without challenges, particularly a wide variety of tempos and grooves. Maybe some some rounds/beats favoured some DJs a little more than others? I dunno, 8 DJs cutting to the exact same beat is pretty repetitive to watch, so maybe not.

 

 

And just to be clear, I definitely think DJackulate won despite the various trials and tribulations, not because of them. Dude's a legend and deserves every success.

[Vet]

Man that was an epic weekend!

 

Firstly props to Jack for the win before I say anything else....class guy and had a great day on the cut that deservedly won him the title.

 

The rest was basically Mixars is SHITE and nobody was feeling the equipment at all...both the turntables and mixers should be set on fire and never used again. lol.

 

There were some pretty close rounds for a lot of dj's that day and things could have easily gone differently but regardless it was easily the most fun I've had competing at scratching.

 

Shout out to all the DV'ers I met and hung out with over the whole weekend...I am ever so slowly convincing the wife we should take a random trip to Galway next year

 

Having said that...anyone ever find themselves coming to Toronto give me a shout and I will be sure to get you sorted with a great time while here.

 

Mad love!

 

- V

[Guest Symatic]

yeah was great to meet you in person vet!

rocky - yep rounds and beats def favoured certain performers - but that is the neme of the game i think, and i know there was a playlist of beats rather than beats being chosen for specific competitors, so despite the threat of getting the "wrong beat" they were all gonna face that same risk at some point.

 

and yeah the universal review of MIXARS is that they are absolutely useless pieces of equipment. the turntables have bad tone arms, both in terms of sound and stability. its a problem for most OEM decks it seems. The Isolation is aweful too. and the platter has problems at ultrapitch -50%. it loses all torque sometimes, as happened to Dubba in his round, and it seems to fight against you when you cut ultrapitch. Epsilon make a deck based on the same OEM design for less than half the price and some how they get this right..... COME ON MIXARS!!!!
and the mixer, the DUO, is also pretty rubbish it seems. I won one last year, but it wouldnt even work with my computer running a slightly older OS. plus it lacks sound quality, and the innofader version is uncuttable almost. the gallileo isnt as bad but not very nice anyway.

the ortofon thing is a pain too - i recognized the skateing sounds they were getting and everyone was having skips all over, especially IQ and Djackulate who are righteys (i think their deck was worse).

With Ortofon concordes i think you have to wear them in for a long time before they are useable for skratching and juggling. the cantelever and it's susspension are super springy and rigid at first, and they need barely any weight at first, and gradually you have to work more weight onto them over a few months. but most of the time we just cant figure why they skip so we add more weight to em - and thats when they get that wobbly skating sound and bounce out of the groove, because more weight/energy is being added to a more springy cantelever..... i think....

[Vet]

One more thing...Only crit on the beats would be next time maybe have each country submit 5 beats and all beats go into a folder in numbered sequence and chosen randomly out of a hat.

 

I'm certainly not saying Jimmy picked deliberately or anything but it takes away the optics that he's favouring or selecting by choice than by randomness which is something I've read/heard since the battle.

 

All asides even though some complained about the 'type' of beats some got...well you can't be an all out king of anything without being adaptable! Overall I found the choices of beats a good mix of style/tempo.

[DJ Rock Well]

Interesting to hear the feedback from you guys who were actually there. By and large it seems like things were as they looked on the stream.

 

Vet - FWIW I thought you won your round, although I'm no expert and standards were damn high. And as you rightly point out, there's so much more to a weekend like that than just the battle itself. I was mad jealous of everyone there, it looked like such a great weekend to be part of.

 

Si - what you're saying confirms my suspicions. I agree on the Ortofons, although what I will add is my experience so far of the MKII Scratch carts is that these traits have been somewhat improved on. I initially ran mine in on 2gs just playing records for a few hours, then played two 2hr sets (just spinning reggae with gentle cueing) with the weight on about 3g. Then the next Thursday evening, myself and Paul put them on my PDX and Stanton turntables to scratch, both on just 3gs and they were pretty bloody good considering. Paul was using my Stanton and from the off was getting very occasional skips of just the odd groove or two and only when really pushing tears and hand flappy stuff. The Stanton is a very stable deck sure, but don't understand how some of the other Super OEMs mess it us so badly!

[Vet]

Interesting to hear the feedback from you guys who were actually there. By and large it seems like things were as they looked on the stream.

 

Vet - FWIW I thought you won your round, although I'm no expert and standards were damn high. And as you rightly point out, there's so much more to a weekend like that than just the battle itself. I was mad jealous of everyone there, it looked like such a great weekend to be part of.

 

Si - what you're saying confirms my suspicions. I agree on the Ortofons, although what I will add is my experience so far of the MKII Scratch carts is that these traits have been somewhat improved on. I initially ran mine in on 2gs just playing records for a few hours, then played two 2hr sets (just spinning reggae with gentle cueing) with the weight on about 3g. Then the next Thursday evening, myself and Paul put them on my PDX and Stanton turntables to scratch, both on just 3gs and they were pretty bloody good considering. Paul was using my Stanton and from the off was getting very occasional skips of just the odd groove or two and only when really pushing tears and hand flappy stuff. The Stanton is a very stable deck sure, but don't understand how some of the other Super OEMs mess it us so badly!

 

Thanks man, I appreciate the kind words...I had similar feedback from a lot of people and was a bit surprised to get a tie breaker especially after being announced a winner but respect to Saligo and the judges decision...I was literally going on zero sleep and no warmup at all so by the time I got a 3rd round techno beat I was mentally/technically flat as hell and couldn't hit my power scratches worth a damn by then. Saligo for sure deserved the 3rd round.

[Guest Symatic]

Yeah - tough choices always.... i think i said earlier on in this thread how i would have voted differently in redmist/chmielix at csbbq2017, had i voted on the video alone. But in the moment its so different. The descision is final, for better or worse, and thats how it goes.

[Guest broke]

At first I thought there might have been something wrong with the stream audio, but then I noticed one of the decks sounded worse than the other. That's such a shame, to assemble some of the best scratchers on the planet in one room and then ask them to battle with sub standard equipment.

And I've been saying Ortofons are rubbish for years lol. This is why I blew my Phase money panic buying Shures when they went out of production.

[Guest Symatic]

the ortofons are perfect for me - ONCE THEYRE WORN IN!

 

yeah youre spot on there tho broke - there should have been more effort spent getting better kit, or at least testing the setups before to find these problems earlier. was a bit annoying to see the finger drumming battle get a lot more attention paid to it in that respect. BUT.... i really appreciate people who will step up and bust dope cuts anyway even if the equipment's shite.

[Dubba Dutchdj]

BUT.... i really appreciate people who will step up and bust dope cuts anyway even if the equipment's shite.

 

 

This^^^

 

Yup mad respect to the killers who totally over came how fucking dog shite half the gear was, I on the other hand totally crumbled.

 

Im not sure if the deck was faulty or all Mixars tables perform that way but once I put the deck into minus 40% pitch territory the the torque literally vanished to the point where I was basically doing motor off cuts, the motor actually completely died and turned on/off on me several times. I talked to Jose later that day and said he noticed the same thing and kept his pitch normal because of it.

 

Made me realise how conditioned Im am to high torque and ultra pitch so Im definitely gonna be focusing a lot more on my 1210 cuts from now on.

 

From my own point of view I was always gonna be out of my depth with the level in this comp, especially considering how badly my flow sucks in live battles, meh.... but fuck it, I'll keep on entering freestyle battles for the fun of it, experience and in hope that I'll one day get to the point that I can rep what I can do at home #safespacescratcher

 

The terrible sound from the deck Jack was on sounded to me like ridiculously overweighted ortofans, the new versions of the scratch ortofons are dope but take a lonnnng time to bed in properly and gain there full skip resistance ability.

[Guest It'sPhilFromThursdays]

Im not sure if the deck was faulty or all Mixars tables perform that way but once I put the deck into minus 40% pitch territory the the torque literally vanished to the point where I was basically doing motor off cuts, the motor actually completely died and turned on/off on me several times. I talked to Jose later that day and said he noticed the same thing and kept his pitch normal because of it.

 

 

Holy shiznit that's terrible. Are you sure Ed didn't secretly go and was tinkering with your set up before hand, cos it's usually that

 

RE: ortos, oddly my newest needles bedded in almost straight away weirdly. My first lot did that thing Matt's ended up doing slightly in sounding all fucked like how it sounded in the battle no matter how little weight they had on them. T'was weird. Like me new un's though

[Guest broke]

Im not sure if the deck was faulty or all Mixars tables perform that way but once I put the deck into minus 40% pitch territory the the torque literally vanished to the point where I was basically doing motor off cuts, the motor actually completely died and turned on/off on me several times. I talked to Jose later that day and said he noticed the same thing and kept his pitch normal because of it.

I had a cut on the new Stanton ST150 M2 on Saturday night and they were doing exactly the same thing. At minus 50 they felt like belt drives.

[Guest Symatic]

how to we contact these manufacturers and explain to them that they don't have a clue what they are doing?

 

I spoke to a stanton rep when they were about to drop the new str8150's and he had no idea why we wanted the ultrapitch. to them it seems to be just a feature "those DJ types" want.... but they havent done any homework.

 

its the same reasoning they use to justify putting a 78rpm button on there. when I suggested replacing it for a 16rpm button the guy just looked confused and sad "what about the guys who want to play 78's?"

 

trust me.... nobody who wants to listen to their 78's collection is going to buy a STR150. they'll get a Hi-Fi turntable. The perception of DJ style turntables is that they are not for collectors and archivists, theyre just for "wiki wiki" DJ's. however wrong that perception may be, its just the way it is. So why cater for a non-existant market? why not try sometihng new. 16rpm button would mean you could go even slower..... 16rpm +/-50%..... NEW THING! sure it would be crazy, but not as crazy as trying to market str8150's to jazz heads.

 

fuck it, i'll just stick to Rane 56, 1210's and Vestax 2000's. the manufacturers have lost touch entirely.