Not even in our worst nightmares could we imagine that we would be locked up for three months, barely able to go out to the streets, unable to see our people, unable to go to bars, restaurants, discotheques… unable to go to our clubs. Without being able to… Wait, no. Without being able to dance to electronic music? You’ll have to wait for that.
Since the alarm was raised in different countries, we at Xceed were clear about one thing: we were not going to leave you alone. Our community of clubbers was forced to convert their living rooms, bedrooms, or gardens into dance floors. Fortunately, a computer, tablet or smartphone, a loudspeaker and an internet connection were enough. We were in charge of the music: that’s how We Stay In was born.
Festivals (most of them cancelled), clubs (all of them closed), labels, promoters, management agencies, streaming platforms… Everyone turned to digital environments in a matter of a few hours. The going-out industry faces an uncertain future and its approach to a 100% digital world has been accelerated by the pandemic.
There has barely been a single artist who has not streamed a session in the last few weeks. At Xceed, we wanted to turn our Facebook feed into kind of a hub, a place where the more sessions and performances we have, the better. Every weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, without exception: from the beginning of March to the end of May. Three months. 45 days of broadcasts. 217 sessions. 208 artists. 42 organizers. And, in total, more than 63,000 minutes of music played by our community. In our memories, many great moments lived through the screen. Above all, these 10. The 10 best streams of our We Stay In movement, in chronological order.
Gaetano Parisio @ Origens 3 Turntables DJ Set
It happened on Friday, April 3rd at 9 pm. The Italian Gaetano Parisio celebrated the relaunch of his label Conform Records with a special 3-deck set, which he broadcasted live from his Studio Ample5 in Barcelona. An ode to the Neapolitan techno sound that made history at the end of the last century.
Echonomist @ Antivirus Dance Radio
Antivirus Dance Radio was a project that accompanied us from mid-April to almost the end of May. Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we broadcasted a dj set focused on the most cosmic genres of dance electronica, such as space disco, indie-dance, italo-house and more. Curiously, the first episode we connected with was the one that most captivated us. The man in charge, the Greek Echonomist.
Patrick Topping @ Beatport Live
Hard to forget that Friday. It was on April 24th. Some countries had already been in quarantine for two months and one of the most powerful platforms, Beatport, was getting down to business with a series of broadcasts under the Beatport Live umbrella. One of the most talked-about was the 4h set of the British Patrick Topping from Newcastle. An extensive repertoire of house, groove, tech, disco and even garage music.
WATCH VIDEO (PART 1) // WATCH VIDEO (PART 2)
Nancy (live) @ Awesome Soundwave
We also wanted to join the party that meant the first edition of the online festival Awesome Soundwave, directed and presented by the legendary Carl Cox. During the whole afternoon of Saturday 25th April, we enjoyed up to eight performances, among which the Nancy acid techno live from Dublin stood out.
Carl Craig @ Movement Detroit
The whole scene sighed with the thought that Detroit would be dancing in its streets at that moment. Movement also went online in record-time to bring its latest sounds to the world. That Sunday night, their boss Carl Craig opened the door to his most experimental side with his exploration of sound.
Rebekah @ Soma Sessions
The label Soma Records organized a good marathon of techno music, industrial proposals, and rave sounds for the afternoon/evening of Friday, May 1st. Rebekah was nominated as the big star of the night and the truth is that the Birmingham artist didn’t disappoint. Her hybrid set, as hard, rough, raw, and violent as usual, surely provoked the complaints of a few in the neighbourhood.
Giorgia Angiuli (live) @ Awesome Soundwave
Awesome Soundwave, Carl Cox’s label, again. 15 days later, they were on fire again with eight more live performances. This time, we connected with only a few of them. One was a must: the Italian Giorgia Angiuli and her proposal of melodic house and techno were explored in the same place where each of her productions was born: her studio… toy store. They were 33 magic minutes.
Mathew Jonson (live) @ MAAC
MAAC stands for Music Against Animal Cruelty. On Saturday, May 16th, it organized a spectacular festival, with many of the greatest artists of the electronic underground scene in the line-up. One of them, live from his lounge in Berlin, was Mathew Jonson. The Red Bull Music Academy prodigy gave us an hour of elegant, sophisticated, hypnotic, and delicate electronica.
Loco Dice @ MAAC
Another one who shone at that MAAC festival was the Tunisian-German Loco Dice. From his dj booth in his beloved Düsseldorf, he recorded an atmospheric ambient set, in which deep, low-toned breakbeat set the pace. Without a doubt, it was interesting to discover this more contemplative and less agitated facet of Desolat’s head-honcho.
Phunkadelica (live ft. J.O.D.) @ Muse
De-escalation measures after severe confinement meant that we began to see sunlight and some soon took advantage of this. This is the case with Muse, the proposal by Lehar and Musumeci. With them, we travelled to the imposing Andromeda Theatre in Sicily to vibrate with the indie-dance electronics of, among others, the Italian duo Phunkadelica. It was a live performance with the singer J.O.D. that took us on a flight for 60 minutes.
(Cover Image: © Xceed)