The last weekend of the summer dance season certainly saw those of us within commuting distance of London spoiled for choice, with Richie Hawtin and his Minus label playmates Troy Pierce and Marc Houle parachuting into The End, and Ricardo Villalobos headlining an equally massive night a mile down the road at Fabric, and that was just on the Saturday. We all know that much is made of the Richie/Ricardo debate, but I sidestepped it for the night on the grounds that I had caught Villalobos playing Fabric in the spring, and had not yet managed to see Hawtin playing anything more than a one hour set, this probably being the gaping hole in my techno experience to date. Given Hawtin’s unquestioned importance to dance music as a whole over the past two decades, and the fame and popularity of the Minus sound, I had nothing but the highest expectations, and I went looking to be converted, if a bit wary of the slight cultishness that marks the scene around this label.
Impressively, it seemed that a very large portion of the extremely international crowd were there for the music as well. The punters ran the gamut from hardcore minimal groupies to American tourists who chatted in the toilets about what they’d gleaned about Hawtin from the New York Times, but it seemed like everyone had techno on their lips, in my experience a rarity in the most famous clubs. With only three DJs on the roster across the main room and lounge, which might normally attract six or eight on a night this size, Minus, and sponsors Beatport, had certainly done their best to keep everyone’s eyes up front.
This made life a little difficult for Sancho Panza, the stalwart monthly residents of the upstairs AKA bar, but Jimmy K-Tel, Matt Brown and guest Eren held up their end in fine style, playing laid back house and tech house all night, branching out at times into soulful electro and funk vibes. One representative mix saw Kenny Hawkes’ and Louise Carver’s slow grooving 'Play the Dub' making way for Mountain People’s 'Mountain 004.' In short, just the right antidote for when things got a bit too twisted downstairs.
And twisted they got. Troy Pierce kicked off the night with a three and a half hour set of labyrinthine, experimental, and typically dark minimal, where dubby kicks were often magnified to room-swallowing size, and much space made for the weird and wild. By the final hour, tunes like his remix of Ellen Allien’s 'Your Body is My Body' were beginning to capitalize on the anticipation in the air, and his very good final mix involving Popof’s room-rattler 'Alcoolic' had the dancefloor in fits.
Unfortunately, not all of his set proceeded as such. Although there is nothing wrong with unconventionality, there were moments when Pierce seemed in poor control of the room: unusual cueing points were in abundance, and these often did more to confuse the rhythm of the dancers than to produce any obvious benefit. Likewise problematic, some of his mixes started strongly only to wander off into meandering loops that spluttered out aimlessly. Despite this, hats off to him for the distinctiveness of his sound and the boldness of his style.
Where Troy Pierce pushed at the boundaries of looseness permissable in a set, Marc Houle was, undeniably, all tightness for the duration of his very well-produced one hour live performance. The brief inclusion of last year’s huge 'Bay of Figs' caused the largest cheers of the night, and 'On It,' the large b-side to his current smash hit 'Techno Vocals,' was similarly well-received. The tone he coaxed from these simple and very minimal tracks was awesome and impressive, with the only reservation being a slight sense of everything being very tightly buttoned up and perhaps a small step too far in the opposite direction from Pierce’s psychedelic wanderings.
By the time he finished, the slowly increasing volume of The End’s superb sound system was getting squarely in the ridiculous range, and Hawtin’s prompt arrival for a behemoth four and a half hour set had the makings of something special. Right from the get-go, Hawtin’s tone surprised: favouring bright and melodic minimal that sometimes bordered on a tech house feel, his set provided incredible intensity without the trademark Minus austerity. Hawtin included some music that provided the rare sensation of revelation, of something new and bold and beyond what I’d heard before. This combined with mixing of masterful complexity and unfailing energy meant that Hawtin’s set was a tour-de-force which frequently displayed real brilliance. Drops to raise the dead and people being carried out were the name of the game by the final hour, on a system cranked up to the loudest I have ever experienced to boot.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t identify much, although as other avid trainspotters had the same problem, I’ll blame this on the freakish knowledge and unsurpassed access of the DJ and not any lack of effort on my part. How different an experience, then, to seeing Villalobos six months back. Whereas Ricardo seemed all about showing his reaction to the world through his music, with vocals and diverse and international beats in abundance, the mood of the Minus DJs all night was, to my ear, introspective, more about their internal thoughts and emotions than about their relations to others, with the very close focus on just a few performers drawing you in tightly to their world. Despite the drawbacks that this approach seemed at times to pose to Pierce and Houle, Richie Hawtin showed that the Minus method is rewarding, if demanding. In the end, I came away more impressed with the imposing figure of Hawtin than I had hoped.
Photo credit: Matt Cheetham