It would be an understatement to describe the past weekend as a haywire music fest. It was massive on every scale (from the drinking to the crowds to the amazing musical line-up in town). So on Saturday night, armed with a fully-lined stomach and a thirst for the good stuff, I met up with an old school pal who was down from KL specially for the weekend roster of AWESOME. We hit up Zouk for the Readyset Glo anniversary with Steve Aoki and Cobrasnake (see pic above)… and were mildly surprised to find it full house from wall to wall with nutted-out hipsters in full dayglo regalia waiting for the man of the hour. And appear he did.

I don’t really remember much from then on to be honest. I’d say we were sober for his intro and things went rapidly (up and then) downhill from there. Let’s just say I had a bit of a TKO and a few regrets. Mel called me at 6pm to remind me that I had a date with the devious Wes Gully, aka Wesley Pentz, aka Diplodocus, aka the one and only Diplo that night – the final day of Gilles Peterson’s 3-day Worldwide Fest organized by Kinemat (big ups to the Kinemat crew for doing it up well good). I dragged my hungover corpse to Fort Canning and tried to look alive but it was tough.

Below from L-R: Mr. Wesley Pentz himself (Diplo), Steve Aoki/Kid Millionaire, M.A.N.D.Y.

Tried to down a beer or two but absolutely couldn’t do it. Thankfully the crowd seemed to be in good enough spirits to compensate for my weakness. Had a chat with Diplo before he went on - poor bloke caught a late flight in from Jakarta. Check out what he had to say here. Cracking jokes about the energy tent, he went on to bang out a stand-up set, crazy upbeat and cheeky as hell. Total 180 from when I saw him back in 2004 at the Middle East in Boston with RJD2 – then he churned out a pretty laid back opener for RJ, but on Sunday he was bouncing off the walls (well, if there had been walls). Threw in a solid mix of old and new, and polished it off with ‘Say It Ain’t So’ which prompted a grand operetta of boozy sing-a-longing. A deservedly good night for one of the nicest guys in the game. M.A.N.D.Y. followed but I had to crawl home and throw myself a pity party. I know, I’m getting old.