Original Photography by Nick Gee
The final leg of the
Krafty Kuts New Zealand Tour ended at
Hot Lava in the snow resort town of
Ohakune on the North Island, with the tour previously
seeing the legendary mixologist land in
Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and
Queenstown.
We arrived at the venue to catch warm-up act
Hyperkaine playing a wee
Human Traffic bootleg, which gets the
already growing crowd in a vigourous party mood.
The Hot Lava sports a spacious dance floor and wooden interior, aptly fitting the snow-town based bar, in which we find the stairs to an upstairs viewing platform which was
already full and overlowing with buzzing, excited revelers.
Auckland’s
Adam O took over just after 11pm and produced a
perfectly balanced warm-up for Krafty, the crowd by now had rammed the venue
below us and the impressive lighting and lasers had been activated - indeed, it mesmerised the
fairly youthful snow-bunny crowd.
Krafty came on at
midnight to a rapturous noise with his intro blasting him in to a full-on, high energy set, packed with his trademark edits and re-rubs, spliced together with new Krafty Kuts
productions including 'A Bit Krafty' and 'Pounding', bot of which are due to feature on the
forthcoming Krafty Kuts long player. Highlights came in thiock and fast through his honed and inch-perfect set, including an edit of Da Hool’s 'Meet Her At The Love Parade', flanked by a cheeky vocal from long term friend and collaborator Dynamite MC.
The crowd - and this humble journalist - were literally swinging from the rafters as Krafty fused
dubstep with electro beats and then back to his trademark crunchy breakbeat to keep the mix fluid, energeticand loaded with elegantly beautiful combinations.We left slightly beforethe end, thoroughly
exhausted from a good rave up, our thoughts and feelings towards Krafty's abilities reaffirmed once more after witnessing a true master at work.