| Issue #001 (August 2002) |
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| Frigid – A Not So Brief History - Part One |
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Frigid – A Not So Brief History - Part One
Story by Sebastian Chan
This month Sydney’s weekly electronic music night Frigid turns six. Established in July 1996 by Sub Bass Snarl (Sebastian Chan & Luke Dearnley) and Sir Robbo (Shane Roberts) Frigid has played host to hundreds of young local producers, DJs and a selection of the more interesting electronic acts from around the globe. For a lot of local labels Frigid offers an opportunity for their artists to showcase their sounds and friendly environment for live acts and DJs to experiment in. In many ways this was never supposed to happen – Sydney’s supposed to be a land of house and plentiful glam DJ entertainment. Four venues and six years down the track we piece together a three-way interview between Seb, Luke and Shane as the reminisce about what’s happened.
Before Frigid, Cryogenesis.
Before Frigid the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Well no, actually. Frigid started in July 1996 but long before then Luke and Seb were involved in a similar project called Cryogenesis. Luke explains, “We got sick of always playing hardcore techno when the bpms got up around 200 and started getting interested in chill out music as an aside to our regular gigs. Around the same time [1993] a local crew called Punos (‘sound’ upside down) had moved from putting on raves to focussing on chill out events – ambient raves, and they would be hired by rave promoters to take care of the whole production of chill out rooms for big parties. They would do PA, lights, off amazing decor and book the acts - everything. Our interest in that music and our frustration that other people's so called recoveries we just micro-raves in disguise lead us to want to do a proper recovery chill out in Sydney on a Sunday. The idea was to create a space for people who were still 'up' from their Saturday night rave adventures to come down in, with relaxing, interesting music and comfortable surroundings. We'd provide fresh fruit and odd toys and the like. It was a fortnightly event in a pub in the Rocks called the Dumbarton Castle [now a towering block of units]. It had this back room with glass walls that overlooked Darling Harbour and the shipyards full of rusting cranes and gantries, and a beautiful west-facing view of sunset. Every Sunday morning we would lug all the pub furniture down a narrow staircase and fill the room with massive velvety cushions courtesy of punos. It used to run midday til 10pm and the sun would set over the water right in front of us - the perfect visuals for a sunday chill out gig. We had a really tiny PA - it was like two foldback wedges or something - but that was all that was needed for the space. This was pretty much the first time we'd ever put on a regular gig and without the encouragement, support and resources of Punos it would never have happened . . . It was quite amazing: folks would turn up really gee'd up and couldn't even sit down then slowly over a few hours you'd see them on the cushions and then later asleep in front of a speaker and even later still when the sun was setting these people would awaken from their slumber, curiously but happily looking around - they always seemed so happy waking up amongst those huge cushions with beautiful chill out music washing quietly over them . . . That club was also a space that provided deejays with an opportunity to play stuff they couldn't normally play, non-dancefloor stuff. I remember we wanted to get some well known names on the flyers and it happened that a lot of the people we asked were happy to play sets for free because they rarely got a chance to share all the more mellow tunes they loved to collect with an audience. Phil Smart, Sugar Ray, HiShock, Colour, even BizE doing a hip hop and jazz set . . . that made me realise we were doing something that was reasonably unusual.”
Seb continues, “After about 6 months it became increasingly expensive and tiring to run the recovery. Sometime we’d be playing at a party the previous night and then have to go straight down and start lugging furniture. And we were both trying to study at uni at the same time which didn’t exactly help. And then the pub decided to close down . . . The idea of a recovery lay dormant for a while until in early 1995 we felt it was time to try doing a free outdoor recovery event. We chose Cooper Park near Bondi Junction, I think because Biz E suggested it was a prime location, and we lugged a small PA and generator down there and got the word out. It was a magical day and even the ranger who appeared at the behest of some angry tennis players [“that ‘noise’ is putting us off our game dahhhling”] was suitably impressed with the relaxed and uncomplicated nature of the event. It certainly wasn’t a rave . . . After that we started to think about other places to do a similar thing and we ended up at Peacock Point in East Balmain a little later. The PA arrived late and the punters who showed up ended up dancing on the rocks above us facing the harbour. It was there that Dale [Prince Valium] jokingly suggested we should look at the islands in the harbour . . . the first island chill adventure happened in 1995 and has been a regular Sydney fixture each year since . . . We did start up the weekly recovery chill again for a brief period at the Punos warehouse in St Peters where the whole live film-remixing concept was birthed by some guests one week and later at the Sancturary Café on Campbell St opposite Kinselas but it didn’t last”.
Before Frigid, Atomic HiFi
Sir Robbo was a member of reggae sound system Atomic HiFi in the mid-90s and before that the drummer for seminal Sydney ska band the Latenotes. In the years between The Latenotes and Atomic HiFi, Shane’s life was impacted by Madchester and rave. Although it took until 1995 for the Frigid crew to be introduced to each, we’d all been to many of the same events. Shane explains, “Jason Willo and I had talked about putting a sound system thing together for quite a while - we wanted to present our musical selections of reggae, dub, funk and hip hop in a different way , incorporating live singers and players, effects and sampling into the mix along with a revolving team of selectors - initially there were about 8 of us DJing! My old ska band, The Latenotes, had gotten back together for 2 reunion shows in January 1995 and we travelled to Melbourne for one of them. On the way back in the van Willo talked our fill-in keyboard player Florsch [Sonik Professa] into being our sample guy. Our percussionist Bongo Caveman was recruited as well, we picked up Sloth on trumpet and occasional keyboards along the way and we'd also have M.C's doing stuff every now and then. Nasty Tek Sound System were doing a similar thing at the time but we wanted the musical focus to be a bit broader than their primarily dancehall focus - we loved so many styles between us. Our old mate Lyndon and a guy called Andrew bought the more abstract downtempo stuff to the mix like early Mo Wax , and Ninja Tune and we were all kinda interested in the jungle stuff that was coming out at the time. We did a couple of straight-up reggae soundclash things with Nasty Tek, Soulmaker and the like but from there things started to get more diverse. We would play down at Crucial D's "Phat Chalice" nights mixing up all kinds of stuff and up in Newcastle quite often, where we were introduced to the darkmaster himself , Mark N., and started to put on our own events. An early one was at the Golden Ox in the morning straight after Vibe Tribe style party - that was interesting - we played all day!”
From that early link up with the Vibe Tribe the turning point came with the Vibe Tribe’s early 1995 Carmageddon event. Unlike their other free parties in Sydney Park Carmageddon was a fundraiser for an anti-M2 motorway protest and one of the few Vibe Tribe events to be held in a warehouse, and the only one to be held literally right next to the Federal Police offices. Ju Ju Space Jazz and a host of techno DJs played in the main area and in the ‘other room’ it was Sub Bass Snarl, Atomic HiFi and Nasty Tek. Shane continues, “Carmageddon was a pretty pivotal moment as i recall - Atomic were in the ‘chill’ space alongside you guys and Nasty Tek and it just turned into a totally wild separate party of its own - a mash up of dancehall , dub , hip hop, "trip hop" ( as it was known ) , jungle and old reggae - it was very exciting and totally new for Sydney at that time - people just responded in the biggest way and I could certainly feel a shift in peoples’ tastes for new music at that time. I remember feeling on that night that something new was happening before our eyes, and that kind of feeling comes all too rarely.”
During the latter half of 1995 and early 1996, Sub Bass Snarl and Atomic Hi Fi did a few collaborative events. The Journalists Club behind Central Station (now also a block of units) hosted two events – one with Renegade Soundwave and another as a Cryogenesis fundraiser. This was an incredibly vibrant time in Sydney. DJs were experimenting with new styles jungle and ‘trip hop’ had shaken things up considerably. Both Atomic HiFi and Sub Bass Snarl started playing beyond their previous niche crowds. Basscode and All Funked Up started series of events that took their DJs normal crowds into new sounds – house crowds started checking jungle events, rare groove crowds started getting into local hip hop, and hip hop crews into weird electronica. Gemma and Seymour Butz has started up Club Kooky down in the Club 77 space on William St and it was packed out every Sunday night and provided a much needed eclectic dancefloor alternative for a lot of people. All Funked Up’s Bernard deBroglio (Kid Dolphin) started a design business called Soul Pacific and began to put out a fabulous zine called Head Shots which Shane started doing work on from a warehouse space in Chalmers St. During this period, too, the Vibe Tribe riot police raid happened, Anna Wood happened. The old ways were cast aside and in 1996 when things should have been looking pretty grim, a new vibrance had emerged. Not too much later we got an offer from Kinselas to fill their vacant Sunday afternoon slot.
The Birth of Frigid
“The Frigid name came about as a wordplay on chillout. We were throwing around words one night – Stiff (too promiscuous), Rigid (too much like stiff), Fridge (too boring) – until we came up with Frigid which has stuck ever since. I still like it because it implies that we have nothing to do with so-called ‘sexy clubbing’ or ‘sexy house’” Seb explains. It was every Sunday and the idea was to have guests each week and alternate the organisation of the lineups between Atomic HiFi and Sub Bass Snarl. Shane, “I can't remember how long we did alternating weeks for but before too long Atomic Hi-Fi sort of fell apart and I was hosting the night with you fellas every week.” Luke adds, “I seem to remember we were only planning to do four weeks of gigs at Kinselas as a way of getting the deposit together for one of another island event. So I never thought it would keep going so long, and back then I was of the opinion that weekly clubs are really hard to sustain and it was therefore one of the last things I would have chosen to do.”
Bernard from Soul Pacific lent his excellent design skills to the first series of flyers which were always done in one month blocks. Seb explains, “the idea was to make collectable sets of flyers where the front image from each week would fit together to create a meta-picture. I was thinking about my old cricket cards from the 81-82 series with Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh, Richard Hadlee, Martin Crowe I had at primary school. You used to collect all 300 or so of the cards and then put them together in order upside down and you’d get this aerial shot of the MCG . . . Of course, the Frigid cards never got bigger than a set of 4 . . . Shane, Bernard and myself started to conceive of them around themes – black revolutionaries, cult film actors – and people started collecting them as we had planned, and it was very effective promotion . . . The first six months of Frigid happened to be at just the right time. Metabass & Breath were in their infancy, Raised By Wolves had started to move from hip hop intro instrumental productions, and we got Mark N down from Newcastle for the first time to Sydney to do a hip hop trick set. He blew everyone away . . . Of course even then Frigid was not without its detractors. Famously, one guy announced to us that ‘maaate, this nights like an RSL club’. And our farewell to Kinselas was an RSL-themed night where everyone played dressed in their dressing gowns watching the TV and playing Atari 2600.”
Enter The Dragon, The Dendy Years
Frigid lay dormant over the summer of 1996/7 until two of our friends from the Dendy Cinema decided they needed to bring some quality entertainment into their bar. The bar, previously a cocktail lounge, offered an excellent venue with an in-house projector, comfy seats, a former Olympic marathon champion as chef, and some of the best coffee and bar staff we’ve ever had. Re-launching in February, Frigid at the Dendy last two fabulous years until the beginning of 1999.
Shane remembers, “I think the Dendy was when we really hit our stride; we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do by then and it was a space that offered a host of new possibilities. The film idea really kicked off there and that was brilliant - an early cult film and then music from about 9 'til late with visuals running all night. I was always running around frantically on Sunday arvo trying to get fresh films together! The flyers took a real cinematic turn there too, and the Dendy staff were great and embraced the idea in a big way.” Luke continues “We did the door ourselves in shifts and really got to know our crowd through that. I remember it was very friendly, you could just go up and sit at a table with a group of people and chat to them, ask them what they thought of the music, the films, and what acts they'd like to see in the future. It really helped us to stay in touch with our community. The films were great; b grade sci fi, blaxploitation and Hong Kong cinema . . . You must remember that this was the Dendy before anyone knew it as a club. Back then it wasn't one, it was just a swish bistro for a cinema. The place was very plush and that was its charm; a very comfortable place to relax with friends on a Sunday evening.” Shane adds,”I think our musical ideas really started to gel during this time too and we developed a strong sense of identity albeit based on a fairly eclectic palette of sounds. The film soundtrack remix nights were a big challenge and very rewarding. These were nights where we'd pick a film and then add our own score culled from our collections whilst still trying to maintain the dialogue of the film. [This was closely aligned with what Sub Bass Snarl did at Freaky Loops] - they'll always stand out in my mind as special nights . . . Frigid at the Dendy became a real social event.”
The first incarnation of Cyclic Defrost was born of the Dendy during this period. Seb elaborates, “Luke and I were both working at the university at the time and Dale [Prince Valium] had taken over doing our flyers from Bernard. Dale and I had worked together on the university newspaper several years before and were old mates from going to raves back in 1991/2. Anyway we thought that making a simple photocopy magazine would help us get a bit more information out to our punters about what was on and little bit more about the films because there were all these people coming along and leaving without ever really finding out about a lot of the music we were playing, the guest acts, or the history behind some of the film choices. The first issue was preceeded by a survey we handed out at Frigid’s first birthday party – a riotous affair with a birthday cake that had everyone unable to walk. A few months later and we were posting copies of the magazine to over 600 postal addresses across Sydney and printing up more to hand out at the club. Cyclic Defrost quickly grew with contributions from the Dendy staff on cult films of the 50s, 60s, 70, and the infamous Degrassi take on 80s popular culture.”. Cyclic in its original form lasted 15 issues and remains archived on the web where it still gets a surprisingly large amount of traffic.
By the end of 1997 the Dendy was going very smoothly and Frigid organised a New Year’s Eve event in conjunction with Gemma and Seymour Butz from Club Kooky called Dung. It was an incredible night which probably changed things for the worse in the long run. Well over the legal capacity crammed into the venue for two rooms of crazy music ending in a remarkable three-way back to back set between all three Frigid DJs mixing across a palette of early 90s sounds. Luke continues, “[Dung] turned out to be the blueprint for what the Dendy has now become . . . promoters were suddenly asking 'wow, where did you guys find this venue - its amazing’ and from that point on the venue management were inundated with requests to do Saturday night allnighters. Of course this quickly led to the place getting pretty smashed up and the wear and tear by the time Sunday evening came around was beginning to get very noticeable.” Frigid did two more Dung events and hosted a night with Neotropic and DJ Vadim but by the end of 1998 the Dendy changed management. The new bar manager pushed towards turning the venue into a proper club and told us 'you know you guys could have a really successful little night here if you just played some more top40 stuff' so it was definitely time to leave.
To be continued . . . .
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