- Every one of Level Party's lineups makes a statement. Organized by local DJ Andrew Devlon, the roving party tends towards fuzzier shades of house and techno, from the blissful haze of Terreke to Jay Daniel's tilted soul. Last weekend the bill featured White Material boss DJ Richard with Los Angeles producer Suzanne Kraft (AKA Diego Herrera), as well as local hardware wizard Via App and Abu Ashley. It went down at an intimate warehouse venue that's one of the main staging grounds for Brooklyn's left-of-center techno scene.
Apart from the side room, where you can sit on a stained couch and enjoy the smell of Port-A-Potties, and a large wood-paneled roof deck for smoking, the space doesn't offer much. Even the lighting in the main room was economical—no strobes or LED arrays, just a few spots of dim red light in a dark room. It says a lot about the attitude of this particular scene, where people prefer their venues to reflect the music: raw, authentic and uncomplicated. These parties are all about the dance floor, which was swinging to cheery house, funk and breaks from Suzanne Kraft when I walked in at 2 AM.
Kraft and DJ Richard made for a clever pairing. The former brought soulful jams that were heavy on vocal harmonies and free-wheeling synth noodles but maintained a freaky, eccentric edge. It's not easy to make a concrete cube feel all warm and fuzzy, though Kraft pulled it off with uplifting selections like Roy Davis Jr.'s "Gabriel" and Max D's breakbeat-driven edit of Watt Noize's "It's My Life." The organizers hung a backlit parachute from the ceiling—a clever way to soften the grey of the high-ceilinged industrial room.
The temperature seemed to drop with DJ Richard's first record. Among his opening tracks was Marcellus Pittman's "The Mad Underdog," a dissonant, paranoid techno tool that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A couple of Kraftwerk cuts lightened the mood, but his set mostly stuck to fierce, atonal drum tracks built to strike fear into the hearts of happy ravers. His mixing was first-rate, though a skipping needle made for a couple of hiccups in his all-vinyl set. By the time Abu Ashley opened with Marquis Hawkes' "Outta This Hood" it was 5:30 AM and I was on my way to coat check, where the promoters offered me a banana that I ate on the walk home.
The gig was a success because the lineup was dynamic, but not all-over-the-place. Late-night techno parties often lose my attention because the mood barely budges over the course of many hours. Others fail to pull me into the groove because their arc is too manic. I regret missing Via App earlier on, though her more experimental hardware set makes total sense in the sequence. It goes like this: you start off weird before the party's in full swing, loosen everybody's joints as peak time approaches, and when the crowd's warmed up, take them on a one-way trip to Poundtown.