Old ravers never die, they just better their financial acumen. While techno producers David Moufang and Jonah Sharp may not have top ten chart hits to their name, the return of their collaborations under the name Reagenz is a sure-fire bet to pay off with seriously awesome music.
I’ve seen Reagenz play three times in the last couple of months and every time has been a master class aquatic house and techno that left me with a smile on my face. First time was in a warehouse in Vancouver that felt like a bit of a return to my younger days; all sweat on the walls and classic tunes. The next was on the coast of Vancouver Island at a festival called Soundwave, an evening of blissful waves of melancholy tech-house that felt like they were channeling the waves not ten feet away.
The last time I saw them was last month at the Decibel Festival in Seattle. It was one of those moments that stays burned into your brain. Some of my closest friends on either side of me, a couple of infamous North American techno providers in front of me and behind me, Canadian radio icon Patti Schmidt and Alain Mongeau, head of Montreal’s Mutek festival. Vancouver meeting San Francisco and arm-in-arm with Montreal, dancing with gleeful abandon to these two guys who first put out an album over a decade ago.
The beautiful thing is, they don’t need to be doing this. As Move D and Spacetime Continuum, they’ve put out enough quality music to cement their individual legacies with ease and could happily exist for the rest of ther musical life spans just doing that. But it’s visibly apparent that after all these years they love working together and shaking some serious crowd booty. It’s the regeneration of an iconic partnership that will yield the release of a brand new album in 2010.
reagenz live @ decibel festival 2009-09-27 by Move D