- When I arrived at the Make Mistakes party in March, the sweet aroma of incense greeted me. This April, it smelled like pot. The venue was the same, but the arrangement was different, with the DJ booth set up at the side of the room instead of at the front. I wandered inside with my friend in tow and we looked around for familiar faces, which tonight, unlike last month, were fewer and farther between. "Pheek draws a diverse crowd," one of the partygoers commented. And a diverse crowd it was.
Most of the electronic music shows I have attended recently have relied heavily on immersive visual elements, giving the auditory component stiffer competition for the participant's attention. It makes the show feel out of focus. One thing that has set the Make Mistakes parties apart from other Denver-area techno events is its incorporation of handmade installation art pieces. This time, the DJ booth was framed by a long, coiled structure made from sheets of paper meticulously joined together to resemble a strand of DNA.
Steofan (Steven Dermody), playing his debut set with the Make Mistakes crew, set the course for the evening when he played Matthias Meyer's "Voltage." The crowd returned the favor by cheering in unison. Les Freres Courvousier took the crowd somewhere else, though. If fun could be planned, this is what it would have looked like: The duo exuded a synchronicity and enthusiasm that only comes from years of playing together.
Pheek played a generous deep house set at the height of the evening. He even inspired a couple, who were in costume—her in a loose sequin skirt and him in dapper attire—to take center stage and put on their own performance. Pheek didn't play in a straight or even curved line. He kept things fresh, albeit a little hard to follow. Near the end of the set, all of the beats felt so dense I thought I could actually grab them as they hurtled past me in slow motion. "I feel dirty listening to it, but it's so cleansing," quipped my friend, for whom this party was an orientation to Denver's underground live electronic music scene.
By 4 AM, the end of Pheek's set and the beginning of Stefny's live performance, the audience felt like an electrically neutral group of atoms being held together by the molecular art installation instead of the disintegrating chemical bonds formed by the music. Every time Stefny's needle skipped, I lost a little more charge, but she exhibited admirable composure around the mishaps in sound. She graciously smiled, kept calm and carried on. She included plenty of vocal tracks, unlike those who played before her. But even with those voices around to grab onto, her set needed a little more distinction to keep the crowd at her mercy.