- The setting for the Visionquest label launch was Berlin's famed Watergate venue. Since my previous visit to the club a couple of years ago I had heard rumours that the club was now overrun with tourists and had lost its musical roots. "It varies night to night; it just depends if people show up for the music or for the club itself," said a local I found myself blabbing away too. The place was filing up with an array of outfits you only find in Berlin: headbands, shaved heads, ponytails, piercings—bringing with them props from an amusing luminous umbrella to a plain weird porcelain rabbit. Still, everyone's sole focus was on the music and the Italian duo, Tale of Us, who had been given a super sized three hours to warm up the main room.
The double act weaved back and forth from deeper house to more driving beats, teasing the audience in preparation for the headline act. The DJ booth began to shrink as the Visionquest boys (minus Lee Curtiss) prepared their gear, until the Italian pair bowed out to the trio of Shaun Reeves, Ryan Crosson and Seth Troxler.
It's often said that "three is a crowd." In this instance it wasn't. Each armed with a laptop and a 1210, the trio seemed perfectly in tune with one another, each knowing what would further strain the smiles on the faces in front of them. They kept the feel strictly house early on, before bringing up the tempo to more hard edged techno rhythms and offbeat basslines. At around 7 AM the second wind came, as Shaun sent the still bustling room into a frenzy of screams as he dropped the '90s house classic "Get Get Down" by Paul Johnson—even a smug smile appeared on the ever focused face of Reeves. Soon after, the dreamlike vocals of Benoit & Sergio's Visionquest anthem "Walk & Talk" were greeted with similar applause.
Having seen the Visionquest boys play before at Mint Club, Leeds, it was hard to musically tell the two occasions apart, but the differences showed in the atmosphere. In Berlin, there is an ever present respect among the masses for each other; you can never feel crowded out, or encroached upon. All in all, a big launch party for what is shaping up to be a big label.