Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Gabriel & Dresden

Yesterday was the birthday of one of my old roommates, and a former DJ at the club that I ran, so I ended up taking him out to a Gabriel & Dresden show in Las Vegas. It was at the Lavo club at the Palazzo. Nice place.




Gabriel & Dresden took a slight break from touring together in 2009/2010, but they've been pretty busy the last eight or ten months, with appearances in more than a dozen countries. I've seen six or seven of their shows in the past. I was even supposed to see them and do some filming at a show in New York that turned out to be their "last" show before their break, but I missed a flight connection by ten minutes due to snow in Canada, and lost that opportunity. That was one of my most disappointing moments in a long time.

Last night's show at Lavo was the best one that I've seen. They are definitely on their game these days. They've got a pretty versatile set-up - Josh works predominantly on Ableton Live (where he can create unique remixes on-the-fly), and Dave occasionally uses Ableton but is completely at home with CDJ's. The only thing that I thought was odd last night was that they shared the same pair of headphones. Dave usually had them on, but Josh occasionally borrowed them. I would think that they'd use a headphone splitter cord and each have a set of their own. Anyway, I saw the entire set (about three hours) and it was tight. I especially enjoyed the remix or layering of the Eleanor Rigby vocals in their set. The only regret about the show for me is that I didn't think to write down a set list, since I recognized just about every song they played.


G&D are so influential that two of their productions are in the top ten of the 2010 edition of the Trance Top 1000 tracks of all time ("As The Rush Comes" at position #3, and their remix of Above & Beyond's "No One On Earth"). They were also voted as America's best DJ's a couple of times. If you want to learn a bit more about the duo, check out this article on wikipedia, which also has a pretty impressive discography.

Here are YouTube videos for a few of their more well-known songs that have real videos (many of their other hits don't). You'll notice that Dave and Josh sometimes work with other vocalists under different names such as Motorcycle, Andain, etc.






















If you're interested in checking out some of their other music, look for classic tracks such as "Zocalo," "Arcadia," "Summer Calling," "Around You," and more. Or check out some of their many remixes of other artists' tracks, which you can find on their discography page on Discogs (or in the list below).

Also, Dave has a popular SoundCloud page that sometimes has G&D sets on it, such as this one:

Gabriel & Dresden Live at Nocturnal Wonderland 09-24-11 by Davedresden




If you get a chance to see them anywhere, I really recommend that you check out their show!


Partial List of Their Remixes:

2001 - New Order, "Someone Like You"
2001 - Way Out West, "Mindcircus"
2001 - Groove Armada, "Superstylin'"
2002 - 4 Strings, "(Take Me Away) Into The Night"
2002 - Medicine8, "Capital Rocka"
2002 - Balligomingo, "Purify"
2002 - Andain, "Summer Calling"
2002 - Paul Oakenfold, "Southern Sun"
2002 - Tiësto, "In My Memory"
2002 - Weekend Players, "I'll Be There"
2002 - Roger Goode, "In The Beginning..."
2002 - Ils, "Music"
2002 - Jewel, "Serve The Ego"
2002 - Beber & Tamra, "Travelling On"
2003 - Annie Lennox, "A Thousand Beautiful Things"
2003 - Lili Haydn, "Anything"
2003 - Motorcycle, "As the Rush Comes"
2003 - Nalin & Kane, "Beachball"
2003 - Andain, "Beautiful Things"
2003 - Three Drives, "Carrera 2"
2003 - Sarah McLachlan, "Fallen"
2003 - G&D vs. Coldplay, "Clocks"
2003 - G&D vs. Depeche Mode, "Here Is The House"
2003 - Dave Gahan, "I Need You"
2003 - Deborah Cox, "Play Your Part"
2003 - Evanescence, "Hello"
2003 - Jewel, "Intuition"
2003 - Britney Spears feat Madonna, "Me Against The Music"
2003 - Duncan Sheik, "On A High"
2003 - Annie Lennox, "Pavement Cracks"
2003 - Grayarea, "One For The Road"
2004 - Above & Beyond, "No One On Earth"
2004 - Nelly Furtado, "Try"
2004 - Kristine W, "Save My Soul"
2004 - The Engine Room, "A Perfect Lie"
2004 - Dido, "Don't Leave Home"
2005 - Rachael Starr, "Till There Was You"
2005 - Perasma, "Swing 2 Harmony"
2005 - Motorcycle, "Around You"
2005 - Özgür Can, "Changed"
2005 - Nicol Sponberg, "Resurrection"
2006 - Gustavo Santaolalla, "The Wings"
2006 - Robbie Rivera, "Float Away"
2006 - Markus Schulz & Departure with G&D, "Without You Near"
2007 - D. Ramirez & Mark Knight, "Colombian Soul"
2007 - Monochrome, "Pearl"
2007 - 68 Beats, "Replay The Night"
2007 - The Killers, "Read My Mind"
2007 - Shiny Toy Guns, "You Are The One"
2008 - Faithless, "A Kind of Peace"
2011 - Enrique Iglesias, "Tonight I'm Loving You" (D&J)
2011 - Andain, "Promises"



I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:



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