- Two giants go long for the beloved Kiev club's birthday.
- Every year in mid-January, Closer celebrates its birthday with an extended party called Masquerade. Aside from the summer festivals Strichka and Brave! Factory, it's the biggest date in the Kiev club's calendar, traditionally featuring the type of deep-digging, minimal-leaning artists the venue is known for championing.
At Masquerade's seventh edition, masked clubbers packed into every crevice of the compact dance floor, though the fancy dress wasn't the main attraction—most people were there for the two guest DJs flying in from Berlin, Ricardo Villalobos and Zip. This was the pair's second Masquerade in a row, and just like when I caught them at last year's party, I left feeling that, for stripped-back house and techno, Closer might be the best club in the world.
Zip, practically part of the furniture at Closer, was already stitching together classy minimal when I arrived at 4 AM. The main room's Martin Audio soundsystem is one of the clearest around, so there were big moments even for subdued stuff like the Thomas Melchior rollers "Different Places" and "Damsel In Distress"—Perlon classics that have been staples of Zip's bag for years. When Zip upped the ante for his final few, dancers on the floor and elevated stages began to cheer as if their football team had just scored a last-minute equaliser.
If Zip had been tasked with setting the tone, his sparring partner was there to send us down the rabbit hole. Villalobos, sporting a red Venetian headpiece and striking polka-dot trousers, looked collected as he appeared behind the hanging DJ booth shortly after 6 AM. As soon as he started the mood got wilder and the selections tougher. One of his most memorable plays was layering what sounded like groaning cow recordings over a percussive interlude. But farmyard noises aside, mind-bending tricks were kept to a minimum in favour of a slicker approach. Styles ranged from tried-and-tested Detroit fare to dubby house and punchy breakbeats, all mixed with the clinical precision you get from him at his best.
By mid-morning, some tired ravers had spilled into the club's adjoining restaurant, Savage Food, while Zip rejoined Villalobos in the booth. George Morel's "Let’s Groove" went down as well as it does anywhere, but the real treats were the lesser-known bombs, which were almost always accompanied by a quick exchange of mischievous grins between the two DJs, like they'd just pranked their school teacher. Later in the afternoon, Zip took full control, rinsing the kind of gorgeous deep house he gets hounded for and won't likely surface on Shazam anytime soon.
Villalobos reemerged as darkness fell, bringing the weekend's celebratory atmosphere to a peak with Romanthony's "The Wanderer" and a sneaky edit of Michael Jackson's "Ghosts" that he's been playing a lot recently. Then, some 20 hours after doors opened, he ended on a medley of his own tracks. By this point, he was no longer in mad scientist mode, but no one was complaining. For Kiev's club kids, hearing records like "808 The Bassqueen" was worth the price of admission alone.
The Closer resident SE62 dished out high-octane techno and electro to round things off. Those not up for the tempo change headed upstairs, either to smoke a last cigarette or trip out to this year's lighting installation. Around the perimeter of the club, couples sprawled across sofas under candlelight, putting off their taxis home. On the dance floor, the last few heads shared hugs, their disguises now a distant memory.