- At Hugo Ball, smartbar's monthly polysexual party, DJs don't perform from the main booth. Instead, there's a smaller stage—The Alter—set up to the side, hidden behind black mesh curtains and slightly backlit. The lights are almost entirely off, except for some soft, bluish-violet spotlights that bloom every so often. It's a bit of theater for the idea behind the series, which pushes back against genre convention to reconnect with "personal expression" and the roots of club culture.
On Saturday, Hugo Ball hosted Russell E.L. Butler, party cofounder Eris Drew and resident Sold under the umbrella of smartbar's Daphne series, a month-long program focussed on queer and femme artists in dance music culture. Over the course of the night, I saw at least one man in a blazer with slicked back hair, looking fresh out of a meeting but nevertheless bopping to Butler's elastic techno. The Bermudian artist's playfully discombobulating style, which they've described as an effort to "decolonize" the established tropes of dance music, expressed itself sneakily at first, then became overwhelming. Tight grooves and droning modular synth workouts collapsed into swinging drum patterns, before building themselves back up again.
Butler played second, taking center stage between Sold and Drew. Unlike Butler, who played live, Drew and Sold mixed long, pulsing techno sets. Each brought their own singular flair, though they both dabbled in ambient and every so often slipped into blistering breakbeats, most memorably when Drew casually worked a jungle rhythm beneath Aphex Twin's "Ageispolis."
The vibe underlying all the performances was offbeat and open-hearted. As the night wore on and the dance floor ebbed and flowed, some constants began to emerge, especially among the reliably committed down at the front. A few plainly dressed solitary clubgoers swayed trancelike, while other more colorful attendees danced with their eyes shut. There were even some random Wrigleyville regulars, suddenly thrust into the depths of clubland. The womblike dark of Hugo Ball couldn't hide those differences, but it nurtured an intimacy between them all the same.
Photo credit /
Erielle Bakkum Photography