- Midnight at the massive purple fortress that is The End and the club is heaving to capacity with a queue stretching around the block. That is not so surprising considering tonight represented the intersection of perhaps Ibiza’s most famous party with one of London's most respected venues. The energetic crowd seemed to know exactly what it was there for, with both obvious enthusiasm for the music and trademark Circoloco red clown wigs in abundance. With a full stable of eleven DJs manning the decks, some of whom certainly qualify as amongst the most chic of 2007, it wasn’t hard to see why expectations ran high.
The club was neatly divided into three parts. There was big house/techno in main room at the bottom of the club, where smoke machines, an air raid siren and plenty of rotating blue lights provided an atmosphere as rave as could be asked for. The adjoining lounge hosted very contemporary sounding tech/deep house hybrid sounds, and the AKA Bar upstairs, which was hosted by increasingly prominent local promoters Deep Down Dirty, had a more techno/minimal flavour. Despite some aberration from the pattern to catch this and that DJ, my general idea was to start at the top and work my way down – unfortunately as the night progressed I felt much less incentive than I had hoped for to follow through on this plan.
My two favourite sets came from AKA and the Lounge: specifically from Simon Baker in the former and Cassy in the latter. One of the first tunes of Simon Baker’s set was also one of my favourites of the summer so far, Argy’s 'Malena', an auspicious beginning from my perspective. The UK based Baker has produced several huge hits this year, and the quality of his spinning didn’t belie the high standard of 'Confused', 'The Fly', and 'Plastik' (which made a welcome appearance near the end of his two-hour set.) Cassy was also excellent, playing a sensual and groovy combination of deep tech house and minimal, unfortunately for about one hour only, before staying to dance in the Lounge and chill in the Mezzanine Bar until very late. In fact, everyone I heard in AKA and the Lounge impressed, with Jamie Jones also standing out from the rest, playing a set most typical of the current tech/deep house craze and reminding me of why, personally, I don’t mind it: it's a trend that combines genuine soulfulness and techiness, which Jones accomplished seamlessly. His set was the highlight of the night: a brand of house music which very much covers all the bases, involving the head and moving the feet.
All this suffusion of quality amongst the second and third room acts, however, wasn’t the only thing that kept me out of the main room for most of the night. Mirko Loco, of Lazy Fat People, brought few of the distinctive instincts that make his productions a treat, playing flaccid tech house in which the occasional judicious drop of a monster kick didn’t go far enough to redeem a set that should by rights have been all atmosphere, but which on the night proved pasty. A major letdown from someone who should have done better. Fabrizio, about whom I knew nothing, was better, playing techno in the pre-dawn hours, the 2.00-4.00 slot if I remember, and whipping the crowd into fifth gear in part by revisiting emerging classics like Matt O'Brien’s 'Serotone' and Ricardo Villalobos’ 'Fizheuer Zieheuer'. Tania Vulcano, the headliner and purported Ibiza queen bee, split the difference between these two, playing a distinctive late-night house sound full of tribal beats and churning basslines, which kept me moving but, as of five forty-five, ninety minutes in, didn’t really feel as though there was enough musical flavour to support her often-brilliant mixing. In short, the main room was the weakest of the three.
By the time I left, an hour before the seven o’clock end, I was deeply impressed by the genuinely up-for-it-crowd and felt that I had heard more than enough good music to satisfy me, but for a night that seemed like it should have been of the very highest caliber there were definitely too many let downs. On its own, Circoloco at The End had a long way to go before it would have convinced me to hop on a plane to the next Monday stint at DC-10.