- For a DJ that lives in Berlin, Richie Hawtin still certainly manages to pull in the punters on his home turf. The numbers that consistently turn out to see him play are no huge surprise to anyone—except, it would seem, for the very venue that had booked him. Arriving at 3 AM, what appeared to be a 20m wide and 10m deep angry mob was sprawled over the pavement across from Alexanderplatz, and was being held back by a metal fence.
In lieu of maintaining an orderly line, the club had opted for a white marquee-like entrance, and it was causing chaos. Progress was slow, and the (significantly) sub-zero temperatures had stripped people of the festive spirit I'd rather expected. Inside, things weren't a great deal better: The 25 Euro entrance fee wasn't exactly the pleasant surprise people had been hoping for, and to make matters worse, the cloakroom was full. The (very) hot club was no place for a winter coat, so there was no option but to wait around in a disorderly fashion for the best part of another hour for a peg to eventually become free.
Intrigued to see how the club would structure the lineup with another big local name like Steve Bug to fit on the bill alongside Hawtin, I searched around for a lineup. Nope—either they'd all been pocketed by the tourists as cheap souvenirs or printing a timetable had also been beyond the forethought of the organizers. By now it was coming up to 4:30 AM, Hawtin was certainly playing in the main room, and, to the best my eyesight could make out from across an incredibly crowded 15th floor dance floor, Karotte seemed to be playing upstairs. I never found another DJ for the rest of the night, and missing Steve Bug was pretty disappointing.
And yet, for all the annoyances that occurred between arriving in Alexanderplatz and finally finding a reasonable place to dance on the main floor, once I was actually there Hawtin was superb. Digging notably deeper and playing substantially slower than I've seen him over the past couple of years, the set seemed far more structured around evolving rhythmic elements than the standard bass-drops I've come to expect from his sets. Whether this was due to a new evolution in Hawtin's ever-changing setup or simply the choice of records that panned out on that particular night I can't be sure, but the set worked extremely well in the relatively intimate (by Minus standards) location and the crowd were receptive and enthusiastic.
There were even occasional forays into electronica and house, particularly later in the proceedings, and the progression of the set felt tight and organic without ever becoming predictable. The crowd seemed to thin rather quickly, particularly given the excellent standards of music, but the extra space on the dance floor was certainly welcome for those of us who stuck it out to the end. Perhaps everyone's energy had been spent on the ordeal of actually getting to the party, or perhaps they were saving some for Silvester night proper, but Hawtin's unexpected sound palette provided the perfect soundtrack to the bleak, wintry sunrise as observed from 12 stories up.