After the arrival of Tel Aviv’s Guy J in Rosario on a rainy night at the Parque Alem tent in 2009, the Lost & Found label boss’s popularity has grown immensely. He has almost single-handedly pioneered a new sub-genre of progressive house, and together with long time friend and label mate Guy Mantzur, Guy J was back to show us his new sounds.
“Every year I can’t wait to land here and bring the music I write and collect to share with you. All the work through the year comes to this moment; to arrive in Argentina.” – Guy J
This time, we catch them in Rosario in mid-June at the Club Brown Lounge. The night started with a 2-hour opening set by Kevin Di Serna who played the perfect music: such soft and delicate grooves.
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Take a look at the XOYO Birmingham opening night - In PicturesGuy Mantzur took the opportunity to start deep but things ended up going right off in the first half an hour! I remember a huge break-point when he played a track with a lovely female vocal that matched with some red-fire-like visuals turning the dance floor on fire for real.
Later investigation revealed it was an unreleased track from Guy Mantzur & Khen featuring Kamila, the vocalist on “Moments Becoming Endless Time”. After that, I remember he increased the pressure until the last 20 minutes of his set where he started to lighten the energy of the music for the arrival of the boss.
When Guy J came up to the decks it was almost 2am and celebrating Guy Mantzur’s birthday, he arrived with a birthday cake and an ear-to-ear smile on his face. Such a nice gesture.
Guy J started his set with an opening melody that really made me fill my eyes with tears, and continued his set with softly deep basses and melodies that were growing in intensity track by track to get to something really heavy like Matador – The Enemy (Julian Jeweil Remix).
It was the surprise of his Argentinian tour sets, as everybody was talking about it on social media, that Guy J was playing some techno stuff and he used it in Cordoba, Bs As and now in Rosario as well. After Guy J’s set Mantzur came up again to the decks to play back to back until close.
Their set together was clearly a mix of both styles and they played through some modern classics like ‘Fixation‘ and ‘Epika‘ which woke up all the dancers. Mantzur left Guy J alone to close the night maybe 20 minutes before the end and he turned back with his classic style to take us to his amazing closing set with the beautiful melodies of his private edit of ‘Dusty Kid – Arvéschida‘. Such an epic closing set!
Once again I was amazed by the audience he attracts and also because it was in a club you can easily imagine guys just wanting to score and take their prize home. I can only remember people shazaming tracks, recording videos, sending audios, and a lot of breakdowns in complete respectful silence to murmurs or comments behind me like “oh, this must be some CID Inc’s stuff”, and “…this sounds SO cornucopia!”, or “…take a listen to that chord and the effect over it“.
This kind of stuff really raises you up as the scene here is still growing and I only receive comments from friends in Europe or the US where Tech House or EDM is stronger. They are far more able to experience something like that as they have so many talented DJs around them; I believe that’s why DJs love to come here, this kind of audience can only inspire you,
So another excellent night goes by and having in mind the events that had occurred in Argentina these last few months, we have to consider us really lucky to be able to still be enjoying shows like this. We all have to take care of this music and scene we love so much, from the first promoter to the last spectator.
Now, it’s time to wait until the return of John Digweed next month.
Photo Credits: Giuliana Reyna
