House Is A Feeling

So I’ve been to Berlin and Dublin since last doing a proper post. Unfortunately my trip to Berlin was quite clubless. Due to illness I spent most of the time on my friend’s floor, shivering and having delerious dreams about something to do with the window. I wouldn’t recommend it.

I did manage to go to a club called Scala on Saturday the 18th. My friends and hosts were going and so I went for a few hours, despite my flu induced insanity. It was interesting to see a Berlin club that is a bit more off the beaten track than the big house/techno places. We spent most of the night upstairs where a DJ was playing disco and some 80s stuff, but downstairs was more interesting to me.

At the beginning of the night a DJ played a lot of slow industrial type sounds, what you might call “body music” or even new-beat I suppose. It was interesting to see how that style still lives somewhere like Berlin, as you could imagine pre-house clubs thriving on it. When trying to explain dance music to someone who has no interest in it (as they mentally will you to stop boring them to death) you often might be tempted to say “oh it’s not like all cheesey as you probably think it is”.

Yet I really hate this disclaimer because cheese or at least sleaze seems an essential part of dance music. Whether it’s techno in Berghain or slow 80s beats in Scala the fact you’re in a club moving with people all around makes the music physical in itself, makes sweat and sleaze a part of it. Sadly it’s very hard to say “dance music is both intellectually stimulating and also stupid and also sleazy and also silly all at once” and expectthem to understand.

After Scala I really did spend almost all of my time in Berlin in bed, apart from seeing a few sights on Monday afternoon. I got home on Tuesday night and then went to Dublin on Wednesday.

It was a Bank Holiday in Dublin, and because these are out of sync with the rest of Europe you get an utterly ridiculous amount of DJs playing in the city, from all styles. On Friday I went to the Button Factory, a venue which adheres to the Irish law of having a stupid name, to see John Daly of Plak and Wave Music.

It was the first time I’d seen Daly DJ though I’ve been into his music for quite a while, and the set was excellent. The Button Factory is a lot better than the old Music Centre which Dublin readers will remember, though the ceiling is still way too high for clubbing. I saw bits of Chymera’s set afterwards which people seemed to really love but I just find his music too trancey. In parts it felt like the melodic euphoria just drowned out any beat or any element you might dance to. Still, the reaction of others showed I’m obviously in the minority on that.

On Saturday I DJed in the Bernard Shaw, a pub owned by one of the main promoters in Dublin. It’s become one of the few venues in the city where a sense of youth prevails, precisely because it’s run by relatively young people. In London I guess the notion of people who have a clue about music owning pubs is well established but this is something that’s only catching on in Dublin. It’s sure to grow too.

It was good to play in a pub where people like dance music, and the set seemed to go down well. Midway through a guy asked me “what do you call this music” which has happened a few times before. I always like this question cos I guess it shows people are interested and also that they don’t know what to call what you’re playing.

I definitely feel weird saying “minimal” to someone though, about how odd it sounds. I think I said “house or minimal”, leaving him to have the ten page forum debate with some of you guys!

After DJing I checked out the new club venue owned by the same promoters, called the Twisted Pepper (what did I tell you about stupid names?) If you’re in Dublin over the next few months I assume this’ll be worth checking out. The soundsystem is great though on the night it was Rob Hall playing whose style I’m not into at all. Oddly I played before him in New York about three years ago.

That night he played a lot of grime whereas on Saturday it was a really abrasive and eclectic set but not the kind of music I’d ever want to dance to. The newly painted black walls in the club and the strobe light gave it a kind of mental asylum feel which surprised me a bit, given the music policy will feature other genres besides techno. I left after about ten minutes but would like to see an act I was interested in there. I quite like techno if it’s got a housey side to it, which even Klock/Dettmann do to me, but when things get more IDM it’s not for me.

On Sunday the huge event in Dublin was the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival closing party, featuring Vladislav Delay, Moritz Von Oswald, Laurent Garnier, and a heap of other acts. Unfortunately I’d only arranged to come home at short notice and had no real chance of getting a ticket by the time I was in the city, barring a blag which I didn’t bother trying.

Instead I decided to go to My My and Roman Flugel, in a good small club called Wax where I used to DJ a few years back. It turned out to be quite a good night after a slow and empty start. My My were represented by Lee Jones and Nick Hoeppner who both looked pretty shattered behind the decks. I don’t really expect a DJ to smile so that was okay, though I didn’t enjoy the set much. It was a lot more minimal than you’d expect, and very banging for an empty club. Still I guess playing to an empty room is difficult.

Flugel on the other hand was excellent from start to finish. He really is a brilliant DJ technically, probably one of the best I’ve seen. He was layering tracks over each other effortlessly, with a really energetic pace to it all. There were a good few occasions where he’d mix something out after 2 or 3 minutes but had picked a perfect track to layer over it for another few.

Alter Ego may have tainted his rep with some people but it was a more underground set on Sunday. He began by playing dubby house and moved into more techno and acid sounds as the night went on. The club filled up quite a bit and it went down really well. It’d be great to see him play in Germany for even longer.

After all that I got back to London on Monday night having rekindled the flu from Berlin and lost my voice due to shouting dumb shit while in clubs where the volume is very loud. Still contemplating Innervisions at Plastic People this week though! I’ll be the guy shouting with no noise coming from my fucked up throat.

PS: Some of you may have heard that Moritz Von Oswald suffered a stroke at Dublin Airport and is in hospital at the moment. DEAF have confirmed this to be true so I suppose all that’s left to say is let’s hope he is doing well and can make a full recovery.