- Mutual Dreaming has been running in New York for seven years, an eternity in a city with such a high turnover rate of parties. Founder Aurora Halal has done more than most to shape the tastes of Brooklyn's leftfield techno scene, which in the last couple years has made the transition from emerging to established. There's now a lively network of venues that are purpose-built for dancing, so promoters with esoteric tastes are no longer relegated to scrappy illegal spaces. Elsewhere is the biggest of the new clubs that opened last year, then there's Nowadays over in Queens and a couple blocks over is H0l0, an austere basement spot that changed hands and reopened in November. This is where Saturday's Mutual Dreaming went down, with Xosar billed to headline a night of tough, adventurous techno.
The fog machine was blasting in the venue's back room, a cement hall rigged with minimalist lighting. First up was SHYBOI—of both KUNQ and Discwoman—who showed zero interest in reducing her normal intensity level for the sake of a warm-up set, screeching between gabber, high-speed techno and wild-eyed rave tracks. That she managed to keep the energy up to 11 for more than two hours, without it feeling one-note, was a testament to her clever selections. It also proved that you don't always need to handle the crowd with kid gloves in the early hours of the night.
Relaxer, the Brooklyn artist formerly known as Ital, reinvigorated the room by shifting to a warmer, more inviting palette. I'd seen him play live a few times under his old alias, but this set was markedly different from previous ones. There was less of the dissonant, extraterrestrial atmosphere than I expected—instead he played groovier and more approachable than ever. It was still dark, with the psychedelic head-fuck energy he's so good at, but it was also fast and lean, devoid of any unnecessary elements. He used subtle melodies in a way that felt evocative, but not sentimental.
Xosar, armed with at least one Korg Electribe and an Octotrack, took her share of risks, too. She dragged the tempo all over the place, opening with a moody synth wave number and working her way up to a frenzy of industrial drums and evil melodies. She'd played the party at least twice before this, and you could tell she knew the crowd well enough to trust they'd follow her lead. Only a brief middle section of her set was dedicated to four-on-the-floor techno, and at one point she dropped the tempo by 30 or 40 BPM to dive into her closing run. It's a rare treat to find a place where these kinds of audacious, rule-breaking performances will fly with the crowd. New Yorkers are lucky that Mutual Dreaming is one of them.