TOXIC

Contact Booking : toxicplaneteryinvasion@gmail.com



The treasures you are about to dance to, as you push back the
living room furniture in a feverish burst of activity, were
selected with passion by Uncle O and DJ Solo to celebrate the
third anniversary of the Toxic Nights gigs they have been hosting since 2002.
It feels like yesterday; it was an entirely different era. The 90s
were not quite over. In the clubs, techno still reigned
supreme. And yet the edge was already wearing off its modernity.
Split into a myriad of cliques - deep house, jungle, minimal. -
as many as there were microphones to play into, almost the cliques had long since
ceased to be on speaking terms, and the electronic nights had become hideously
predictable. There was an urgent need to get back the fever and the urgency and
to rediscover the pleasure of mixing genres and people to draw back into
the clubs an audience that fallen out of the habit of going out at night.
The Toxic Nights were born of this situation.
Bottle-fed on hip hop culture, but with an interest in any other singular universe,
Uncle O and DJ Solo have filled their flight bags with a unique mixture of
funk (white and black), electro, rap and even new wave rock, ready to
mount an onslaught on those sleepy Parisian nights. True to this spirit of
openness, Toxic, the album, today contains elements of every style, era and country. The outline of an Internationale of rhythm is taking shape, taking in everything from the
Spanish new wave of the late 70s (Esplandor Geometrico) to iconoclastic
hip hop (Mike Ladd) to the eccentric electro (Dabrye) of today, not to
mention a good number of mutant rarities (ESG II, Royal Family and the
Poor, Maurice Starr.). A desire to mark a break and discover things new
which has prevailed from the early days of the Toxic Nights. Already in
November 2002, the flyer for the first gig, at the Boule Noire in Boulevard
Rochechouart, contrasted sharply with the immaculate aesthetics of the
time. It was more of a pamphlet than a flyer, in actual fact. Its rushed,
hand-scribbled style, its strange cut-up images of men and robots and its fluo spray-paint
colours like graffiti on city walls, are a revival of the urban underground.
A whiff of punk concerts and underground block parties
floats out into the night. In graffiti artists' overalls, protected behind
a wire fence like something from the famous scene in the Blues Brothers, Solo
and Uncle O fight the good fight on the mixer. A dancer in a leatherette bikini and
a fur boa snakes around a striptease pole planted right next to the turntables.
On the dance floor the pressure rises. Anyone would think this was an illegal
after-hours session straight out of an Abel Ferrara film.
New York 2 in the morning? No, Paris Toxic Nights!