Its a bit of a mouthful trying to say Pioneer Korea DJ Competition or PKDC, anyways, last thurs 13 Sept, I went along to check out the finals of the PKDC held at Club Holic, Sinsa, in Seoul. (and yes I know the English in the poster is terrible, you would think they would get someone to help them out with this huh, thou not that my English is any better at times…)
Now as far as DJ comps go, Korea doesn’t really have many that I know of, there is no DMC or the now defunct ITF, they have had one of the Heineken Comps here I think 2 years ago as a one off type of thing. Obviously my lack of Korean and not being Korean doesn’t really help when it comes to researching about this kind of thing. I have come across a couple of what seem to be smaller online comps run from some of the DJ Korea member sites, but these don’t seem to hold any real weight except the Beat 4 Battle, which seems to basically be a jam session for the scratch DJs which is cool.
But at least Korea does finally have 2 comps worthy of note and both are international ones as well. Firstly (and this was the first year for it in Korea) is the Redbull Thre3style Comp (which I myself entered) which is fastly become a world recognized and legit comp and the PKDC (which I didn’t know how to enter lol) which seems to be still more of an up and coming comp and centered in the asia region and I think this is either the 3rd or 4th year its been running.
So anyways, I know a couple of the DJs who are performing (since I met them at the Rebull comp, shout out to Enduke and Pandol and also DJ DD who was also in the house watching) so was glad to be able to go along and support some people I know. So here is a low down on the night…
Starting time, well of course it was late, these things always are, so chilled out while they did the soundcheck, caught up with the DJs and some other people, then finally first up was DJ Enduke, he had a really solid set, had some nice cuts and some cool mixes and music selection, def felt he deserved 2nd place (Check out his set here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwmMK9jONyU
The format for the comp was 3 Hip Hop Style DJs who each had around 5-8mins to perform and 3 House style DJs who had around 13mins. Only equipment they could use was 4 Pioneer CDJs and a Pioneer Mixer (so no serato etc)
Second on was DJ Minor Flava, he was also pretty tight, again with some cool track selections but I felt it lacked variety which is prob why he came in 3rd (Check out his set here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqNH9sFUaaA
Final DJ for the Hip Hop section was DJ Pandol, fresh off of winning the Redbull Comp and also taking out the PKDC last year he was def the favorite to win and overall he didn’t disappoint. His usual custom intro was pretty nice, I did think his cuts sounded a little messy thou, and also some of his juggles fell off a bit but the overall sound and feel of the set and use of a wide ranger of techniques is what most likely won him 1st place (Check out his set here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUYRjiHs6jo
Next up was the house section, now Im not much of a house DJ also not overly into the music so I wont give an extensive review on them but you can check them out for yourself once I get the vids uploaded to youtube. However I will say the 3 of them did a good job, they had some nice remixes and song selection, they weren’t overly creative with their mixing thou but their transitions were mostly good and they controlled the energy nicely (thou at times it was a little off). My favorite set from the house section would have to be DJ Heroin Juices, I liked his intro tracks which created a nice buzz for his set.
At the end of the day from a DJ’s perspective, I think the results were pretty right given I don’t know what the judging criteria was (maybe in both sections 1st and 2nd places could be debatable as I think there were both pretty close) So shout outs to all the DJs who competed, and ill def be competing next year!
HIPHOP
1st DJ Pandol, 2nd DJ ENDUKE, 3rd DJ MinorFlava
HOUSE
1st DJ INI-K, 2nd DJ Heroinjuice, 3rd DJ KAY-SEOB
akadjblaze 