- There is more than a hint of the old Potsdamer Platz to the Glories district around the Hotel Diagonal rising at the frontier of the inner and outer barrios of Barcelona at the moment. Cranes arch overhead and large tracts of earth remain dug up and wracked with half-built steel and concrete structures. And just like Potsdamer Platz, the gnarly, unfinished exterior hide another level of rugged machination beneath the surface: a thumping soundsystem, pressing heat and relentless red lights closing in around dreamy revellers. It's strange to have images of the old Tresor club in mind despite this night's headliner being Berghain's most celebrated resident. But while Barcelona isn't Berlin, lately there has been a wind of change on the clubbing program with plenty of techno, a proliferation of afterhours and what almost feels like a new dawn.
Photo credit: Aya Ulanova & Chris Mann
On this night, for instance, the crowd was all about glamour, beauty and sweat, crowding the soundsystem and baying with mischievous hunger until the end. Even earlier there had been a noticeable flurry of emotion and reverence for local heroes Pulshar as they opened their upcoming tour on home turf at the stroke of midnight. It hasn't gone unnoticed that local music has a lot to say on the bigger stage these days, and Pulshar said it loud, feeding as much off the crowd as they fed off them.
It helped that rather than coming simply to the stage, Pablo Bolivar and Sergio Sainz brought the room to them, standing in the wings and letting loose a long, self-climaxing drone before easing through the highlights from their two albums over the course of an hour. Live, they make it all look easy, but the quality of sound only hid the work going on behind the scenes. Bolivar's deft touch always seemed to unleash what the music needed most, more reggae on newer cuts like "The Price You Pay" and "Down by the River," while other tracks simmered over more elaborate synths or heavier drums. Sainz worked hard too, adding live percussion, dubbing his own vocals with lashings of echo and reworking lyrics to escape the trap of merely rehashing the album sound. "No Meditation" in particular eschewed the main verses in favour of the closing vocal refrain "there is no cure." "Nospheratu" was another obvious highlight, being both heavier than the original and more passionate, with Sainz's vocal delivery possessed and ecstatically received.
Photo credit: Aya Ulanova & Chris Mann
The punctual arrival of Daniel Bell may have denied Pulshar a deserved encore, but the switch to outright party mode was already made with the first disc and perhaps initiated by Bolivar himself who had delighted the masses with a flurry of techno beats before closing. Bell's set was probing and slippery, testing the crowd with constant shifts from deep, low tempo techno to straight house and runs of tech house somewhere in between. Although the frequent changes sometimes required a different mindset, the patient builds and long breakdowns were technically brilliant and captivating. A few CD skips aside, the last hour brought the tempo up a notch and set a steady course for the arrival of Marcel Dettmann.
Photo credit: Aya Ulanova & Chris Mann
Last time I saw Dettmann at Sonar he had perhaps taken the Sonar Lab branding literally and hoisted a complicated psychedelic set on the crowd. Although it complemented Shed's preceding set of mercurial electronica, it somehow baffled the audience. Tonight there were no such surprises. Like Pulshar, he made it look easy, producing endlessly long runs of sustained tension and riding wildly through breakdowns. Moreover, he managed to show it is possible to swing past Chicago on the long drive from Detroit to Berlin, dropping some classic house into a heavy set without forcing a change in perception or blinking an eye. As the dawn threatened, the crowd only drew in closer, drinking the last drops of volume and clutching at Dettmann in the red light as if to devour him. Barcelona isn't Berlin, but no one here seemed to mind.