Stanton Warriors - Making Monday Funday

I have to confess that I've recently been ignoring my youth a bit, accepting adulthood a bit too readily, going to dinners and drinks and watching dance acts come to town and sitting back thinking that perhaps I've grown out of that phase in my life.
But that was until I found out the Stanton Warriors were coming to town. And at Monday Night Social which is the antidote to falling into boring adulthood. I fought off my inner lameness demon (who tried to entice me with Gossip Girl and slippers) and found myself headed to Hollywood and wondering how there was still no parking on a Monday night.
Having heard their FabricLive album I had an idea of what to expect from the London duo, and I tend to find dance acts and DJ sets to be more captivating, simply because the audience can get involved with dancing (not always a guarantee at say, a singer-songwriter gig). Others haunted by the demon of lameness sit there with their arms crossed saying things like "who wants to see two guys with laptops?" and "they're not even playing anything." Which is when I get to patiently explain that all the work is done pre-laptop. That the making of a track, choosing the palette, refining the sounds, selecting and hunting for just the right tracks for a set is an artform in itself, as is working with a continuous set of music, which is like a live animal, and getting it to talk to an audience, get them dancing for hours on end, and giving them an excuse to get absolutely mashed on their drug of choice on a Monday. . .Well, to me, that's an art form cleverly disguised as a good time. Sorry there are no guitars.
In addition to killing it playing to a packed house and quilting together a truly awesome set that pulled from early 90s hip hop, to the Gorillaz, to Booka Shade to their own originals, Stanton Warriors happen to be some of my favorite dance artists. The Stanton Warriors weren't my first introduction into the breakbeat world, but they were the ones who taught me that I loved the genre. Putting aside the, minimalism of their house music cousins, the Stanton Warriors are all about glitter and grime keeping things sexy in a dirty, urban style. Favoring booty beats and standards from early 90's hip hop, the boys touch it up with a healthy mix of breaks, crunching percussion, heightened rhythms and duuurty MCs saying all kinds of shameful things.

Their album Stanton Sessions Vol. 3 streets on November 11th in the US.

In the meantime, check them out on MySpace of hear some of their unreleased remixes on Hype Machine.

Catch up on Stanton Sessions Vol. 1 and 2