- At sometime around 3:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon last month, DJ Qu stood in the booth of Concrete, a boat party in Paris, leafing through his Case Logic. Grego G, the party's resident, was finishing some-to-back with San Proper while Qu stood there, stoic in his camo do-rag, staring out at the dance floor. Sunlight filled the room in wide diagonal shafts, mixing with the stage lights and the vapor from the smoke machines, which billowed wildly overhead thanks to a pair of industrial-strength fans that sat on either side of the turntables, pointed directly at the crowd.
"These things blow at 45 kilometers per hour!" one of the promoters, Pete, told me over the noise as his purple scarf flew up around his head. The girls in front seemed to love these fans, basking in them with their long hair and flowing shirts, practically striking poses like they were in a L'Oréal commercial. It was a bright and upbeat scene full of happy, fresh-faced people, but once Qu took the reigns he barrelled straight into some unapologetic techno––a bold move, but everyone loved it.
This was the second edition of Concrete, a monthly afterhours party. The venue is what looks like a 200-foot sightseeing boat docked at Port de la Rapée, a spot that one of the party's founders, Brice Springsteen, discovered after stumbling out of a Sundae event a few boats down. He figured it would be a good venue for Twsted, his main project at the time, and tried it out one warm afternoon in May. Sammy Dee, San Proper and a few local DJs came down to play, and the party ended up being fantastic.
The Twsted crew intended to move on after that, but their next two venues didn't work out (one because archaeologists discovered of a 15th century corpse buried underneath), so they kept coming back to the boat, which was, after all, basically perfect for an afterhour: plenty of space, no residential areas nearby (aside from a slightly bleak tent village), and two big spaces that work as dance floors (one outside on the top deck, the other in a large indoor cabin with floor-to-cieling windows). They decided to roll with it and began converting the boat into a club, open once a month on Sunday from 7:00 AM to midnight, with plans to become more regular.
Photo credit: Cator C
In terms of music programming, I happened to catch the "deepest" edition of Concrete yet, with Efdemin, Levon Vincent, DJ Qu, Grego G and Binh, a resident DJ at Club der Visionäre in Berlin, each playing for four hours or so. To be honest, I thought this bill might be too ambitious—every time I'd seen Qu and Vincent in the past they were very dark and uncompromising, which probably wouldn't have worked at the one Twsted party I'd been to.
I was wrong: even with both of them at full tilt, and Efdemin playing hard and fast as well (as he tends to do these days), the music suited the scene perfectly. This is partly thanks to the crowd that seemed just as happy with muscular techno tracks as they were with warm house tunes. Everyone was clued in an open-minded, but very far from jaded: Sunday afternoons like this are rare in Paris, which made this one a bit special for everyone involved (including the suited security guy, who was all smiles all night and even appeared to compliment Grego G on his set).
Naturally this made an impact on the music: playing to a crowd that trusted them, the DJs seemed comfortable taking things a little further than they might at other parties. Each headliner brought a distinctly different mood to the room: DJ Qu was tough but emotional, a sound exemplified by selections like Black Jazz Consortium's "New Horizon"; Efdemin was hard-hitting but party-friendly, playing tracks like Floorplan's "Baby Baby" and at least two by Soundstream ("Makin' Love" and "All Night"); Levon Vincent was all post-apocalyptic house (Jared Wilson's "This Love", Jamie Principle's "It's a Cold World" and the Shelter remix of "Mission Control" by Outta Limits).
Unsurprisingly, the best part of the night was a big tag-teaming session at the end, which San Proper got in on too (a friend of the promoters, he'd stopped by on a whim after playing another party in Paris and ended up hanging out all day). The crowd was down to a loyal few, everyone seemed to have gotten a third wind, and the final stretch was the most unleashed of the night, especially in terms of the music. When it finally ground to a halt at 1:30 AM, no one was ready to leave. Some drunk girls near the front begged Brice, the promoter, to let it go a little longer. He shrugged and said: "We've already been going for 19 hours!"
On the way out, Qu and Vincent stood with their bags near the end of the catwalk that led off the boat, and ended up having an impromptu meet-and-greet with all the punters on their way out, everyone congratulating them or asking about certain tracks they liked. Qu was at the end of his rope––he hadn't slept since before a gig in Italy the previous night––but he looked happy as he chatted with everyone. Vincent was about to head off, then had a change of heart. "What the hell, I'll stay and say bye to everyone," he said, putting his bag back down. "Why not? Everybody's smiling."