Border breakers. C2C live at the MOD Club

Do you remember the term “turntablism”?

It may have come up in a story or two throughout the last year. Most of those instances were in reference to C2C, four French DJs who come together into a turntable orchestra.

They started off competing at DMC, won four times and moved on to making their on music as two separate groups, Hocus Pocus and Beat Torrent. Just last year they released a collective EP, Down The Road, followed by a full album, Tetra, this year. This is kind of a big deal and it calls for a tour.

A fairly small group of people gathered this passed Monday at the MOD Club to see C2C. I’m not sure what it is about French DJs not gaining the popularity that they deserve in English-speaking Canada (the Montreal show was sold out) but one would hope that with artists like Daft Punk and SebastiAn coming out from that corner of the world, Toronto would be more open to new sounds.

New, old, remixed, replayed, scratched, battled. This show was all kinds of fun. The set up alone was visual eye candy. Digital stage with synced animations, shifting turntables and a quite sophisticated light system made what could have been four dudes scratching records into a grown-up show. Their competitive battle roots are very obvious during a live performance.

Granted the battle part of the show was a staged and rehearsed performance, it is still the closest one could get to a DJ battle these days without road tripping to DMC. The jazzy swing tracks (“Down the Road” and “Happy”) got the entire room dancing while “Who Are You,” as initiated by the crew, got everyone’s arms up in the air for a solid three minutes. Tilt to the left, tilt to the right, “Who Are You“. Release. Inhale. And Dance.

Hats off everyone. This really was a fantastic show.