- "Proper house music" is what Middlesbrough's *riffraff claim to play host to. With past guests including Dyed Soundorom, Benoit & Sergio and Evan Baggs, if you enjoy low-slung tech house their tagline could ring true. Now back at its original home, The Medicine Bar, *riffraff has been running for eight years under the direction of DJs Paul Bowen and Lee Pennington. Interestingly, the party has a close relationship with The Zoo Project in Ibiza—Pennington regularly plays there, and each party's headliners often end up guesting at the other. But bringing fresh, sometimes unknown, names to a smog-filled town is a much more difficult task than the sunny shores of Ibiza. Already this year, though, they've played host to the Watergate Berlin and 10 Years Of Secretsundaze tours to great success, while Carmine "Karm" Conte was introduced to the UK in December last year via *riffraff, only to return this time with his partner in crime Matteo Millerim under their Tale Of Us guise.
The Italian duo are a curious breed, bringing together a fusion of genres—dark and haunting deep house and upbeat indie rock remixes have both emerged from the Tale Of Us camp. Their recently released tracks on Life & Death and Visionquest have been spun by Jamie Jones and Seth Troxler, through to Sasha and even Tiesto. Additionally, the outfit played their first summer set at DC-10 last month and were soon invited back, only for their second appearance to sell out.
Music at The Medicine Bar is quite literally underground—take two flights of stairs down and you'll reach the extra low, star adorned ceiling that is regularly used by the crowd as a percussion tool, due to the amount of thuds it receives. Warming up the floor on this night was Makormic, followed by the youngest of the *riffraff residents, Kristoffer. The latter's style of deep house and techno ensured that those in the affectionately named "dungeon" were ready for the Tale Of Us takeover at 1.30 AM.
The headliners started off slow, steadily building up and layering tracks with delicate mixing. It became swiftly apparent that their set was going to be thick with their own material, as they played almost every one of their tracks and remixes released to date. The roof was sufficiently raised for their well-known take on Thugfucker's "Disco Gnome," even getting emotional at the end as their "Winds Of Change" echoed around the dungeon at the 5 AM mark. When the lights came on shortly afterwards, the lack of sets from billed residents Lee Pennington and Mark Graham went unnoticed, as the Tale Of Us had played past their allotted time slot—certainly a sign of a successful night.