- The buildup to Hardware 20 had been immense. The prospect of seeing three massive internationals that were high on my ‘To Do’ list had seen me waffling on news pages, forums, work email, over the phone, in person, chewing the ear off just about anyone that would listen.
But the problems with previous Altona and Hardware parties had been plastered over with the promise of this lineup, and the party hadn’t even started before the illusion started to fade.
Long after the working day had finished, Hardware announced that Pascal FEOS had cancelled. Hardware have since posted this message, and I’ll let you make of that what you will. But on the night of the party, posting the message on a forum at 6.52pm meant that the vast majority of punters would be arriving at Altona unaware of the change.
Nonetheless, the prospect of extended sets from Franssen and Rother softened the blow and we traveled across the Westgate, aiming to arrive around 10.30 to beat the infamous Altona traffic and queues.
Above, I said “scheduled to begin”, because when we arrived, the party hadn’t even started. I later asked PDT and Degenerator, who were supposed to start at 10pm, why the party didn’t get underway until almost 11pm. They told me there was a soccer match on.
Excuse me?
Walking into Altona the first thing I noticed was the cut-back nature of the event. The main room can potentially hold many thousands of people, but for this party they had curtained off a good three quarters of it. For all the excitement the Rother fans had tried to create, it seemed this would be a small party by Altona standards.
Almost as soon as I’d entered the main room the records started skipping. One needle in particular seemed unable to find the grooves in the vinyl.
Dee Dee and Slack played an up and down set, the former wheeling out many of the tunes that had made his Fokus set so memorable, including the retro double play of the Vanguard remake of Queen’s ‘Flash’ and The Doors’ ‘The End’.
Will E Tell’s opening had a monstrous slammin’ feel, hearkening back to his halcyon days. A bunch of underage Wonky Wear kids rushed the stage as he started, and although I quite enjoyed the start of this set the levels were already being maxed and I left to wander.
Back for Ben Cromack and as always the man’s skills impressed. Then the sound cut out. That old Altona chestnut was back. This begs the question, ‘Why?’ It’s a problem that is easy to fix: have a someone monitoring sound levels. Don’t make it the DJ’s job to play softly, have someone actually monitoring the output. Problem solved. So why, then, does this happen time and time again in Altona?
But back to Cromack. The crowd cheered Ben on, Rother got up on stage to see if he could help - a moment to be sure! The system reset, Cromack continued.
By the time Franssen hit the stage the skipping problem had been fixed but he still had the sound cut outs to deal with. I’d been told to expect a lot of spinback wizardry from the Belgian and he handled the cut outs with flair and finesse.
Franssen’s set was a delightful mix of funky and hard techno, extremely well mixed, extremely well EQd, and with a huge majority of material that was new to the dancefloor. His sound was a mixture of Gaetano and Cerrone, some of the best European techno going around. However, I found his tendency to drop the bass and volume for extended periods every couple of minutes a tad annoying, and this style interrupted the flow of his set. Personally, it prevented me from really finding my feet and settling into a groove.
Stanny himself was disappointed. Later on he was found hanging off the Lasergun bar complaining of a lack of crowd response. He had played hard, funky, electro, and so on, trying to eke out some kind of applause from the dancefloor. To be fair, neither he, nor Rother, nor Cromack, nor most of the main room acts got a ‘response’ from most of the crowd – if anything, Stanny got the largest cheers.
Nonetheless, 4.30am was almost upon us and Anthony Rother started checking his equipment. There was another moment as Jason Midro arrived to drop his records off next to Rother’s machines. Midro and Rother stood together, exchanged cursory nods, and then went their separate ways.
Rother stood amidst his toys. Franssen finished. The system went silent. And then...aural ecstasy. I instantly recognised the beat and cheered ever louder. Those of you whose ears I’d been in about Rother may recall me talking about the MP3 I have of his live set at the German SonneMondSterne party last August. In my interview with Anthony Rother I labelled it “the best live set I’ve ever heard.”
So when he started with the opening from that live set, I went absolutely crazy. But by the time he intoned a vocal, “I put my inputs, sex with the machines”, my delirium was being offset by a sense of foreboding.
Many have said that at Hardware 20, Anthony Rother played the best live set they’ve ever heard. I agree. The problem is, I’ve been listening to the same set since September.
Loop for loop, cut for cut, Anthony Rother played the SonneMondSterne set. The effects were slightly different. He let the loops run on a little longer in some places before triggering the next one, to pad out the extra time he had to play. There was even one (1) different melody, just before the “look into the future” vocal.
But it was the same set.
So whilst I am overjoyed that a wider audience has heard Rother’s magic, and also that I now don’t have to burn my friends a copy of the SMS set, I feel incredibly cheated that Rother’s inspirational interview answers seem a little...false.
“There’s no plan in my head,” says Rother. He says that if he were to pre-empt what tracks to play where he could drive himself insane. “I do it up on stage.”
Hmmm.
Did I mention the sound cut out twice during his set as well? To be more accurate, the power cut out. For a DJ this is an annoyance. For Rother and his equipment, however, this is a more serious problem. Again, why didn’t Hardware take steps to - at the very least - run the machines on a different power source?
When the power came back on, his machines were out of sync with each other and it took a few moments for Rother get the beats back into order – no mean feat, trying to do that on the fly! Add to that the sound’s degradation - not to the level of WOTW, but I can tell you, I was trying to listen to Rother and all I could hear were the talked – not yelled, talked - conversations of people behind me. Hardware, PLEASE get a new sound team.
After a delightful encore – although played from the mixing console (?), ‘Sex With The Machines’ had those that knew cheering madly - Richie Rich took to the stage. And after all the disappointments and false starts of the night, Richie’s set was fantastic. With some knowledge of the Altona sound restrictions, he kept one eye on the level indicator on the wall through his set, waiting for it to drop to a safe level before mixing into his next tune.
Wheeling out lots of hits of the past, Richie didn’t take down the tempo as he sometimes does, but he kept us all dancing. Hardware were trying to do something different, with Midro playing last, and for me this really worked. “We are trying to finish the party on a more happy note, a little more frantic than usually mellowing it out as such.” Well done to Richie for pulling it off. ‘Two Months Off’ rocked, and I haven’t heard ‘Compass’ in a very long time!
Midro’s much anticipated start was disappointing. I was looking forward to hearing some pumping anthems – there was a sizeable contingent hanging out to hear ‘Time To Burn’. But with an uninteresting start, we clapped along with Midro for a bit before exiting into a stupendously gorgeous morning. However, the news has since arrived that Midro did indeed wind up playing lots of older classics. Next time we’ll stay :)
Overall it has to be said that Hardware 20 was a disappointment, and a lot more has been said of the problems. What is certain though is that Rother, no matter how pre-prepared his set was, has left an indelible mark in the consciousness of many. And so, alongside all the issues at Altona, there it was, electronic music at its finest.