- 89, the recently opened club from the organisers of Kraków's Unsound Festival, usually starts to fill up at around 1 AM, so there was a look of mild shock on the face of the promoter, Łukasz Warna-Wiesławski, as five beery lads in Hessle Audio T-shirts stomped about the dance floor within seconds of the party starting. "This never happens," he told me. "They're probably the Czech guys who were writing on Facebook asking what time we opened." Ben UFO, Pearson Sound and Pangaea were still assembling their record crates as shouts of "Love you!" and "Hessle Audiooooo" drowned out the first tunes of the night.
In the run-up to the club's launch in October, Unsound cofounder Mat Schulz tweeted that 89 "has a touch of the David Lynch vibes," and you can see what he meant. Blood-red leopard print carpet covers the basement floor to ceiling; the only gaps are small circles left by the old stripper poles. A crescent of booths with black leather seats curves round a compact dance floor, with the DJ facing the crowd from a small stage. Hazy red light floods the venue. Before it was a strip club, it was Crazy Dragon, a vibey nightclub beneath the then-swanky (and long-defunct) Hotel Forum. (89 runs a disco party for locals called Crazy Dragon in homage.) The décor, which evoked bleary-eyed mornings spent at Bloc. Festival in Butlins, hasn't changed since the venue opened in 1989.
The Hessle Audio trio had probably expected to begin their all-night set with an hour or so of beatless material, but the group of rowdy early birds called for something meatier. Airy melodic breakbeats soon made way for bass-heavy percussive workouts with a distinctly UK flavour. Within the first 90 minutes I heard Ramadanman's "Revenue," Autechre's remix of The Bug's "Skeng" and Peverelist's "Esperanto." House and techno featured with increasing frequency as the dance floor swelled, though a well-timed rhythmic curveball was only ever a track or two away. Their set didn't slowly build in pace and energy so much as rise and fall, sometimes dramatically. Around 1 AM, Ben UFO almost ground the night to a halt with a lengthy passage of synthy, sludgy ambience, only for Pangaea and Pearson Sound to immediately punctuate the mood with a quick-fire medley of classic US house (Kevin Saunderson's "The Sound (Power Remix)," Maurice's "Out Of Nowhere"). This persistent element of surprise, combined with flawless taste and technique, is what makes the trio such thrilling DJs.
By 2 AM, 89 had come alive. A core crew cut expressive shapes down the front, while young, smiley 20- and 30-somethings milled around the edges, sipping cheap cocktails (£4) at the circular bar. It's not often you come across a small venue (the capacity is around 400) with so much character. The DJs, by this point, were taking it in turns to do longer shifts—Ben UFO rolled out oddball outsider house, Pearson Sound transitioned into dreamy breaks techno, and Pangaea mixed swiftly from bleepy techno and acid into dark synth pop. Every slight shift in the music was met with the same low-toned cry from the crowd. "Where are you guys from?" I asked one of the lads from earlier. "Czech Republic," he spluttered back. "We've made a 300 KM round trip to be here, but it's totally worth it. Why? Hessle Audioooooo, man!"