Insomnia 31/1/09

The Superbowl happened the other day, and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals. But viewers in Tuscon, Arizona, were treated to an extra special surprise.

Straight after a Cardinals touchdown with less than three minutes to go, the feed was cut out and replaced with something rather different. A very short but really rather moving film of a particularly well endowed young man standing up, pulling down his trousers and shaking his penis about as a disembodied voice explained "You can shake a little air into it". Nice. Makes Janet Jackson look pretty tame.

Anyway, the slightly inappropriately named Insomnia (would you call a sex toy company “Parkinson’s”?) happened the other night. They brought us Eric Prydz, Kissy Sell Out, and a bunch more super sexy DJs.

Eric Prydz stepped up to the decks early on to play us a song or two. An awful lot of people seemed to really like him. Personally I’m not convinced. I think he makes sort of the dance music equivalent of the TV show ‘My Family’, you know what I mean? Kind of watered down, lowest common denominator stuff that everyone sort of doesn’t mind, but no one really loves unless they don’t know any better.

Kissy Sell Out was up next. He’s a guy who really should be crap. He has a stupid Hoxton mullet, he used to be a graphic designer and he seems to be allergic to sleeves. He comes across as the kind of guy who’s all style and no substance and maybe just a bit of an arse.

In fact Kissy Sell Out is awesome and there’s a fairly simple explanation as to why. Firstly, he loves Alan Partridge. So much so that he remixed Gary Numan’s ‘Music For Chameleons’, the Partridge air-bass anthem. That scores him a lot of points.

Last year Kissy released an album, and lately he’s been touring a live show which consists of him dancing around in his PE kit wielding a keytar. Despite these glorious ingredients by all accounts the show was slightly underwhelming. But at Insomnia he returned to what he does best, hopping around like a loon behind the decks and putting on a proper party. It is during his DJ sets that Mr Sell Out proves once and for all that he is unequivocally not crap.

A Kissy Sell Out DJ set is fun. Simple as that. His sets are completely unpretentious and he tears through all sorts of mad tracks making it impossible not to crack a smile. He’s a bit like a more ravey DJ Yoda. Music snobs may turn their noses up and deplore all the silliness (“How dare he play that? Good lord!”), but people that realise going clubbing is really just about having a good time quite rightly love him. Life’s too short for Ricardo Villalobos.

So Mr Sell Out rocked the stage, playing all sorts of mad shit and making sure everyone had a jolly lovely time. Heroic.

In conclusion, call on meeeeeee, Valerie. Good day to you all.