- When Jamie Roberts and Arthur Cayzer, AKA Blawan and Pariah, pulled up at their hotel in Madrid on the afternoon of Saturday, April 30th, they were met by several hundred young girls. Their arrival sent a ripple of excitement through the crowd—when they play together as Karenn, the UK pair travel with three or four suitcases of hardware, which probably looked promising to those gathered there. By the time I arrived at the same hotel a few hours later, numbers had dwindled down to the dozens, the result perhaps of a series of similar false alarms. (I'll put you out of your misery: they were waiting, for hours, for this guy.)
Roberts and Cayzer were in town for Mondo, arguably the capital's best-known house and techno party. Over the past 16 years, it's played a huge hand in broadening the city's dance music tastes, providing a regular, sharper alternative to the time-worn circuit of heavyweight DJs in huge clubs. Mondo's bookings are by no means esoteric—Maceo Plex, Rødhåd, Danny Daze all played in April—but they're varied and occasionally adventurous, especially when it comes to hosting house DJs in a city (and country) with a reputation for liking it hard and fast (Omar-S, Floating Points, Hunee, Job Jobse, David August and Joy Orbison all made their Madrid debuts at Mondo). When I visited, though, hard and fast was all there was, as Karenn lined up alongside Zenker Brothers.
Karenn stepped up to a table laden with gear at around 2 AM, just when Mondo was approaching its fullest. The DJ before them, resident Victor Santana, had bowed out in a barrage of heavy kicks and noisy stabs, so it took the crowd a while to warm to the pair's deeper, weirder style. They worked with a silent intensity, each of them so preoccupied with their bank of machines that they almost never broke concentration. More impressive was the palette of sounds and moods they conjured up, from trippier fare in the first hour (distorted screams, trancey synths, woozy basslines) to leaner and darker passages in the second. Underpinned by relentless, rampant drums, what sat on top was never static and always packed with flavour.
From the back of Sala Cocó, the middle-sized, garishly decorated club Mondo calls home, their performance took on a ravier quality, as sheets of green, purple and white lasers pinged across the sunken dance floor. It's not the most beautiful venue, or one that feels particularly well suited to underground club nights, but as soon as you descend from the periphery into the pit, your experience is more or less transformed: the sound is excellent and the largely Spanish crowd smile and dance hard.
Tanned bodies still writhed all around me come 4 AM, when Dario and Marco Zenker sidled into the booth beneath Karenn. They played for two and a half hours, mixing slickly and sticking to the pace but with tracks that hit the body harder than the mind. I was hoping they'd indulge their dreamier side, and maybe unleash the odd breakbeat. Instead, they thumped it out, much to the satisfaction of the audience. When the music stopped at 6:30 AM, the brothers stuck around, eventually gravitating towards a trio of local fans wearing Ilian Tape T-shirts. After a chat and some group selfies, the Zenkers grabbed their coats and followed their newfound friends out into the night.
Photo credit /
Patri Nieto