Everyone loves a warehouse party, right? Human beings have a natural desire to feel their historic roots. And dance music grew up in warehouses, so it still feels at home there. But the reality of putting them on today, in London at least, involves a heavy dose of risk management and firefighting—talks with the council and police, backup venues—all of which is expected to be invisible to the partygoer. Broken and Uneven and Electric Minds, a promotions partnership including personnel from The End and We Fear Silence, took it upon themselves this year to schedule a run of eleven parties in the capital called The Hydra; all with blistering lineups, and all in warehouses.
Photo credit: Daddy's Got Sweets
For the Dial Records showcase, this was in Netil House, just off London Fields, with a spacious, cubic cavern draped in black curtains as a main room. A couple of the seams did show. One side opening had to serve as both the entrance and the path to the smoking area, because as the council had judged, using the front entrance disturbs the residents. Confusion ensued. And, yes, there was an issue with the air conditioning—explained here—which reprised similar misfortunes from their Ostgut Ton showcase.
Photo credit: Daddy's Got Sweets
Actually, half the time, me and mine were too busy dancing to care all that much. There was a surprisingly wide variety of music, and not always adhering to the Dial sound that closely. Redshape appeared as Palisade, a pseudonym he's used for a release on Dial sub-label Laid, and wore a black mask with a white vertical stripe down the forehead. He used a laptop and a MIDI controller, and played a set that wasn't worlds apart from his style as Redshape. It was, maybe, less driven by lead lines, and more by warm subterranean washes, with crusty analogue sounds on top. Label co-runner Lawrence played twice and varied his style from skippety tech house to techno, with frequent dips into more characteristic waters. "The Devil's Dancers" by Oppenheimer Analysis and "Ol" by Plaid both made sense in the context of what he was doing.
A soft, intricate touch throughout was a background reminder to the label at the controls. Sometimes it was subtler, like in John Roberts' dynamo of a set, where tough, clattering kick drums and tight electronic sounds were occasionally eased by more delicate tones. Sometimes it was more overt, like in Pantha du Prince's performance, which he played from ground level on a laptop and a range of controllers. As expected, it was heavy on sonorous bell sounds and tracks from Black Noise. "Behind the Stars," for example, was stretched out, with its repeated bass motif modulating the audience into a loose, hypnotized state.
Photo credit: Daddy's Got Sweets
Roman Flügel and Efdemin, on all night together in a smaller room upstairs, gave the sense that they were more about playing what they felt at the time than about operating under some grand master plan. Both are known not only for expertise, but for a quirky sense of adventure, and it was the kind of thing you came away wishing you'd seen through from start to finish. Shortly after midnight, Flügel was playing pad-soaked deep house with a bumping groove—surprisingly uniform stuff given some of his mixes. Efdemin, at around 3 AM, was locking a small throng into some butter-smooth techno that had a soft drive and a melodic tinge. Later on, they wandered freely, as Cajmere's "Percolator," Crackboy's killer "Back To The Future" edit and then a segue straight into some full-throated disco defied a sense of what should be mixed together. That room was the hotter of the two, but that still wasn't enough to overshadow the quality of the music. Even with the high temperatures, last Saturday was pretty damn good. Without them, the Hydra run promises to be special.
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