- The dance floor at the OYE Records x Hotflush x Bite Club Mayday party in Berlin was empty until Max Graef started playing. Graef, a native Berliner and hotly-tipped young talent , arrived for his 4 PM set with a crew of friends in tow, who formed a small crowd in front of the DJ booth. Their entrance marked a turning point for the party: in the early hours, most people were chatting in groups, sipping Mojitos and grazing on food from the various gourmet trucks that had set up in the empty lot in front of the boat-turned-nightclub Hoppetosse. Now it was time to start dancing.
Graef traded off a few hi-hat and clap-heavy warm-up tunes with his collaborator, a DJ known only by the name Leon. The pair's set explored each of their styles, and not always seamlessly—when Graef ground the 4/4 rhythms to a stop and fired-up a hip-hop number, the response from the dancers was lukewarm. Graef has good taste and daring impulses, but he hasn't quite mastered how to guide his dancers, so some of his riskier selections come off sloppy or scattered.
In some ways, the following act, ItaloJohnson, represented the other side of the same coin. The Berlin-based trio has slowly built up steam with militant anonymity and minimal press, and theirs was a stylistically cohesive house set from start to finish. The consistent energy encouraged the audience to dance through a few light showers. By the time they finished around 7 PM, the wind had picked up and the sky was getting darker. It was an appropriately moody climate for Scuba.
The increasingly grim conditions drove some people into the boat's interior, but the dance floor was still more packed than it had been all day. Scuba abandoned the hallmarks of the sound he's adopted over the past few years—dramatic filter sweeps and white noise breakdowns were few and far between. Instead, he cut through forceful, chugging house and techno beats with searing hi-hats and deep-bellied basslines. Most of the crowd stuck with him despite the ominous clouds, which had put a slight damper on the festivities. All in all, Hotflush's Mayday celebrations were mature and low key, especially compared to the debauchery happening on the city streets outside of Hoppetosse.