Tuesday 9 October 2012

Why you should sell your kidneys to get hold of an Opiuo ticket


...because Opiuo brought the funk! 


Back in 2009, when a couple of lads called Koan Sound first started releasing dubstep and a year before the Ghetto Funk blog exploded mid-tempo, a Kiwi producer living in Melbourne followed up a couple of low key remixes with a free EP called Physical Symptoms. The 100bmp sound somehow manged to be clean, floaty and melodic, yet also fun, dirty and psychedelic, as bouncy as bed springs and as funky as James Brown. It was a lot like having warm sex juice squirted right into your brain via your ears.  



A split EP with VENT followed on Colony in the UK around the same time as exposure to the US through An-ten-nae's seminal Acid Crunk vol.2, while the progressive psychedlic scene was treated to remixes of Fiord and Antix.


With the release of Slurp and Giggle, his debut album in the Summer of 2010, Opiuo became staples in almost everyone's mid-tempo, glitch hop and ghetto funk sets, with mash-ups and remixes bubbling up thick and fast. While it's hard to pin down such a nebulous thing as influence, the increasing level of funk in burgeoning mid-tempo dubstep sound and recent glitch-hop progressions owe a lot to this man.

More recently the ongoing Butternut Slap series has revealed a deep love for soulful vocals , live instruments and a tendency towards the off beat that keep things moving forward, while his Sunmonx project has allowed him to indulge more chilled out tendencies.



As remixes for Infected Mushroom and Koan Sound have extended Opiuo's tenticles towards new and bigger audiences, anyone lucky enough to have tickets to the London gig at Plan B on 26 October will get to experience the man who's setting the trend in an intimate venue for what could be the last time. If you've not been fast enough on the draw, he's playing what promises to be an unforgettable back-to-back set with Koan Sound at Bedlam in Borunemouth on 20 October and in his own right at UKF in Bristol on 27 October.

EUROPEAN TOUR
Oct. 20th - Bournemouth, UK @ O2 Academy
Oct. 26th - London, UK @ Plan B Basment Bar
Oct. 27th - Bristol, UK @ O2 Academy
Nov. 1st - Oslo, Norway @ Jaeger
Nov. 2nd - Paris, France (Details coming soon!!)
Nov. 3rd - Trondheim, Norway @ Blæst (Mad Love Ent. Presents: Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On)

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