A.Skillz @ Moonbar, Brisbane - 30th September

Last summer Krafty Kuts rocked crowds across Australia alongside a little known (at that time) protege named A-Skillz, since then Krafty Kuts has returned by himself for a short tour & now A-Skillz has come back to do the same. The first stop is Brisbane, where an almost capacity crowd has shown up at the Empire Hotel to find out if this kid can cut it on his own. The answer... hell yea!

Starting off with some of the funkiest hip hop booties I have heard in a long time, its easy to see he has been hard at work in the studio. The first half of the set featured plenty of mash ups including Michael Jackson, Missy Elliott & others, he kept the energy level up all the way by constantly chopping & changing throughout, hardly giving the crowd a chance to catch their breath. Some favourites were 'Trickatechnology' & the surprising DJ Shadow classic 'Organ Donor' which brought the house down.

As the temperature in the empire got higher, the music got tougher, revealing that the man also has a taste for things a bit darker. It was at this time that it became hard to breathe on the dancefloor but this seemed to do nothing to calm the crowd who were still bouncing as hard as they were from the first beat. Plenty of fresh & extremely phat tracks, (a lot I had not heard before but am sure I will hear again) featured in this second half of the set, one of the big tunes I did recognize was the latest offering from the plumps 'Soul Vibrates' which went down a treat, but was overshadowed by a couple of huuuge new cuts from the same boys, which A-Skillz told me he had just been given before he left for this tour.

The 2 hour set was over all too quick but rest assured every single hip hop, funk & breakbeat fan in the place went away completely satisfied & wondering how long they would have to wait for this whizkid to come back again with or without Krafty.
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