- Waking up at dawn and heading straight to the club might be par for the course in Berlin, but it takes some getting used to: one minute you're lying flat in pitch-black silence, the next you're being pushed around in the cloakroom queue, still wiping the sleep from your eye. When I got to OHM on Saturday, slipping inside just past 6 AM, the streets were still dark. The club, hazy and red-lit, was darker still, and it took my eyes a while to adjust. You wouldn't normally put yourself through this ordeal at OHM—doors tend to shut latest 9 or 10 AM—but tonight the Hot Mass crew were in town, and they were going long.
This was Hot Mass's first party outside the US, and only their second outside of Pittsburgh, the rust-belt city where the queer-friendly club and eponymous weekly was founded in 2012. The connection with Berlin came through Same Bitches, OHM's popular gay night that Hot Mass has called "our little clone overseas." There are obvious parallels between the freewheeling spirit and on-point music policy, but also with the venues—when Hot Mass cofounder Aaron Clark first stepped foot in OHM he couldn't believe how familiar it felt. In 2016 and 2017, he invited Same Bitches to host the first Saturday after Movement Detroit. When the time came to return the favour, WOW Air had just started doing cheap direct flights, so Clark rounded up a team of residents and regulars and flew everyone over for less than $300 each.
You could tell OHM was a natural fit. The energy was just right, relaxed and non-judgemental yet with enough bite to stir shit up when the music called for it, which it frequently did. Back in Pittsburgh, Hot Mass hosts four nights, all under the Hot Mass banner, on a monthly rotation, so the club is as much about techno as it is as about house and disco. This diversity came across brilliantly at OHM. When I arrived, Kiernan Laveaux and Tony Fairchild were rocking the nearly-full room with a twisted soundtrack that included Polygon Window's "The Dice Man." Bent double over the decks, Berlin debutant Eris Drew skewed more '90s rave and feel-good house, her precision vinyl mixing and occasional well-timed scratch or sample drop the hallmarks of a seriously skilled DJ. She had the place jumping, unleashing a number of the same bombs from her excellent RA podcast. (That said, Gat Decor's "Passion" was the one.)
The dance floor swelled and receded from there. Father Of Two, who runs a rising queer party in Cleveland called In Training, misjudged things initially after Drew, playing too dark and percussive. It took the room a while to recalibrate, by which point he'd started throwing in perkier UK bass and garage cuts like Pearson Sound's "Stifle" and Groove Chronicles' "Master Plan." Aaron Clark and Jacob Meehan ran with this vibe and thumped out an hour of pumping house, only to veer off into deeper techno (John Selway's "Simmerdown") before circling back to breezier bits in time for the 1 PM changeover. There was still a solid crowd at this point, and they were rewarded with the party's most exuberant selections, served up by disco aficionado Jarrett Tebbets. I caught sight of one of the cleaning staff, freed from his duties, plucking air basslines with his eyes closed. I've never been to Hot Mass in Pittsburgh, but I left OHM with such a strong sense for what makes it so beloved.
Photo credit /
Eris Drew