Globus / Pumping Velvet / Multisex
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This past long weekend I played at Globus on Thursday, Pumping Velvet at Dalston Superstore on Saturday and Multisex at Watergate on Sunday. Though I wasn’t really thinking about it in this way beforehand, with the benefit of hindsight I think it shows I’m actually arriving at where I want to be, DJ-wise, in my life: three highly respected venues, three brands of crowd, three wildly different musical propositions, and three times I took on the task and did a good job. Oh and I had a blast along the way.
The first time I ever went to Berlin was in April 2009 and when I got back home I wrote all about it on my old blog. I also recorded a mix with a tracklist themed to my experience — the titles of the tracks referred to things that had happened on our visits to Watergate, CDV, Kantine, Pbar and CDV again, and I included artists I’d heard DJing or whose tracks had been played over the weekend. I still have the mix and tracklist:
Joe's Mix for Berlin, April '09
01. Prosumer & Murat Tepeli – Lov (feat. Elif Biçer)
02. Terre’s New Wuss Fusion – Thirty Shades Of Grey
03. Moodymann – Misled
04. Daniel Wang – Berlin Sunrise (Die Nacht)
05. Kelley Polar – Vocalise (From Here To Polarity)
06. Nick Holder – Friday Nite At Movement
07. Nuyorican Soul – It’s Alright, I Feel It!/MAW Latin Blues
08. Black Jazz Consortium – New Horizon
09. Herb LF – Complex City
10. Deadbeat – Sun People (Dub Divisionaire)
11. Carl Craig – Darkness [Radio Slave Remix]/Prosumer & Murat Tepeli – Drama Baby (feat. Elif Biçer)
12. Mark August – Warm [Zander VT Detune Mix]
13. Move D – Heidelberg Gals
14. Nick Höppner – Violet/Nuyorican Soul – You Can Do It (Baby)
15. Ricardo Villalobos – True To Myself
16. Leonid – Sadim
17. Prosumer & Murat Tepeli – Serenity (Reprise)
Today, 15 years later, when I look back at this past weekend, one of the big themes going into what I played was this period around 2007/2008 when I discovered house music, the influence of Villalobos and Prosumer, the pursuit of combining clubby and deep music, the desire to embed messages in the music. There’s such a strong through line.
Rather than record a whole mix now, for this recap I’ve picked 5 key records I played over the course of these 5 days, using them as a jump-off point to talk about the parties, my preparation, other tunes I played and how, from my perspective it all went down. These are accompanied by 5 related bonus selections, just because.
This is a long one, so settle in, take your time…
Mr Barth & A.D. – Above The Skyline [Svek, 1998]
A little after 6am on Sunday morning, Call Super arrived at the Water Floor booth ready for their set. I’d been playing since 3am to a half-to-two-thirds-full dancefloor that seemed to turn over every 15 minutes or so. It’s a sensation now familiar to me from playing this particular slot at Bergs. Being the morning session of a 24-hour party, the dancefloor at this hour is a blend of partygoers on different schedules. Many seasoned ravers will come early to get the stamp, check the vibe out for a few hours, then go home to rest before returning later that afternoon for the real sesh. Others will come early and stay as long as their legs last, which in some cases is longer than you’d think humanly possible: when I went back to Watergate for seconds on Sunday evening there were many familiar faces still there from 12 hours earlier. There are the people coming through from somewhere else, perhaps a birthday drinks or another party that has closed at a more civilised hour, though if this group have done a lot of coke then they are as likely to be found talking each other’s ears off in the smoking area as they are to commit to the dancefloor. There might even be some second night rollers — on Sunday this category included a couple of friends who I was very glad to see. As my friend Calum aptly put it recently, all of these varieties add up to a ‘smorgasbord of jetlags’ — and this inevitably leads to some dancefloor churn.
A big part of the challenge of a floor like this is knowing how much to push it and how much to hold back. Push too hard and you become that embarrassing DJ smashing it out to an increasingly thin and browbeaten crowd; but don’t push enough and you risk losing those who really would come along for the ride, if only you’d give them a bit of encouragement. Compounding this dilemma on Sunday, in my head at least, were the conflicting reports I’d received from various friends about the Multisex clientele. “It’s full of young, good-looking fashion people. It’s a bit insufferable,” said one. “It’s full of young, good-looking fashion people. It’s HOT!” said another. Regarding the music, I’d seen the previous lineups, which, apart from a particularly housey one last year, seemed to lean towards faster, proggier, druggier stuff. A seasoned Multisexer told me to be careful not to play too patiently, too deep, too cerebral, or the insufferable/hot YGLFPs would be liable to switch off. Of course my brain instantly told me this judgement would extend beyond my music to my person: be too parochial, too dowdy, too ordinary and the YGLFPs would almost certainly lose interest in me regardless of my DJing. Basically, as a distinctly unfashionable person who struggles to play functional music, all of this intel led me to feel like I would be fighting an uphill battle from the start.
When I walked into Watergate around 1.30am, some of my fears were allayed, while others were confirmed. The crowd was indeed made up mainly of YGLFPs: incontrovertibly hot, insufferability TBC. I had decided to wear my one item of fashionable clothing — the dick shirt my friends gave me for my birthday a few years ago — but I soon realised this was a faux pas. This party wasn’t about being obviously fashionable, it was about wearing black (Berls, duh) or wearing very little, ideally both and looking young and hot while doing it. As you might guess, a loudly printed shirt covered in dicks did not achieve this effect. Thankfully, though, there were some similarly unfashionable friends already at the party with whom I could commiserate about being too old and ordinary looking (you know who you are!), which helped put me at my ease a little. I was also there to do a job, and at this point my dick shirt is essentially my DJ uniform.
Naomi, who was playing before me, did a spot-on opening set. She was playing all vinyl, measured and smooth, gradually building the energy as the YGLFPs filtered in and got moving. I was happy to see that there was already a lot of dancing at this early hour. By the time it was my turn, the crowd was pumped and the BPM remained, sensibly, below 130. I kicked off with the Skylark remix of Chiapet’s ‘Westworld’ and took it from there. (Funnily enough, when I returned that evening I heard this track again, played by Fais Le Beau on the upstairs floor. It never fails.) Without going into too much detail — would I? — I’ll say that the next three hours were about 70% great fun, and 30% slightly stressful trying to execute the push/hold back balancing act and keep the floor poised. To soothe some of my concerns about playing too slow, I upped the BPM. To limit the danger of playing too cerebral, I played a fair amount of accessible tech house. The dancefloor turned over but it never dissolved. As the hours wore on, the morning sun began inexorably to make its presence felt through the red filters covering the Water Floor windows. The first time I turned round and noticed the deep, almost hellish red of the sky above the skyline across the water I laughed out loud in wonder — and then laughed even more when I realised that the dancers, facing the windows, must have been admiring this spectral view all along.
And this brings me to the moment I actually wanted to write about here. After three hours of more-or-less successful peaktime rolling, we finally reached the turning point when the sun emerged over the buildings. Suddenly the deep red light brightened into an almost-pink, the sun itself a brilliant fuzzy white orb now visible through the filtered windows, too bright to look at directly and shining straight onto the dancefloor. I’d been playing at around 135bpm for two hours: Hardfloor acid jackers, UKG slammers, some very successful loopy disco house and a series of wonky Villalobos c. 2008 candyflip selections that I’m not sure everyone was into but that my friend Calum certainly was. I had just bashed through a particularly tuff sequence of bassy electro and techno when it finally dawned on me that it didn’t have to be this way. The sun was up, the room was light, we could have a moment to breathe and bliss out. And of course, like 15 years before, I had an appropriately named track for the purpose: Mr Barth (aka Cari Lekebusch) & A.D. (aka Alexi Delano)’s 25-year old Svek classic ‘Above The Skyline’, as featured in Daniel Bell’s masterful The Button Down Mind Of…Daniel Bell mix CD. I stuck it on (on about +10, lol) and then I looked up. As I’d hoped, the YGLFPs were blissed-out dancing, swaying, lost in this timeless piece of deep house. The sun crept ever higher.
BONUS SELECTION
Tang – Windy City (Emphasis, 1998)
After ‘Above The Skyline’ I resolved to double down on this newfound delicate mood by playing Steven Tang’s ‘Windy City’, from the same year and even deeper. This was when Call Super arrived and I remember explaining that what was happening in that moment wasn’t very representative of the previous three hours. For their part, they promised to resist the ‘push’ and maintain a similar mood for the first half of their set, which they duly — and expertly — did.
Analog Fingerprints – Sick Bam Stab (EPM, 2011)
Funnily enough, it was right after that moment of finally feeling completely in synergy with the crowd that I then had probably the biggest wobble of the entire Sunday morning set. Having delivered a reasonably professional three hours of pump followed by the indulgence of that skyline moment and the few tracks after it, I got a bit stuck. I put on ‘Bell Everywhere 1’ by Medlar & Ishmael, a tune I only got late last year after asking Gwenan for another ID on the record, and it just sounded much more banging than I expected. Somehow, right after explaining to CS how happy I was with the vibe, I had managed to rudely interrupt it. And when it came to deciding what to do next, as the tune played out, I prevaricated.
Looking back at my playlist now, there’s one track that jumps out at me as the obvious next choice, especially since I had wanted to play it at Globus three days earlier but forgot: Matmos’s ‘Steam And Sequins For Larry Levan’. This would have riffed off the clangy metallics of the Medlar tune while finessing them into something more light-hearted. It would have been perfect. In my head, however, the crossed connecting wires of Gwenan, Globus and, by this point, general exhaustion had me reaching not for Matmos but instead for a track I’d only heard for the first time in Globus itself three days earlier: Analog Fingerprints aka Marco Passarani’s ‘Sick Bam Stab’. My first experience of this track, when Dana played it during her closing set, had essentially blown my tequila-and-K-laced mind at 6am that Thursday night, the insane Lambda Labs sound system bringing out all the wild abandon in its stop-start beat, the fanfares, the slapdash cymbals and hollow drums. I’d spent most of the track grinning, wide-eyed and flailing around the floor, and when Dana duly IDed it for me the next day I felt like I’d know when the right moment came to drop it myself.
Well, I don’t think that moment was Sunday morning. After having that whole conversation with CS about how I’d finally got to the deep mood I’d wanted, and after noticing that the ‘Bell Everywhere 1’ track was a bit too banging for my liking, sticking on ‘Sick Bam Stab’ felt like throwing all my hard work out of the (red tinted) window. To my ears it sounded more like a peaktime ‘Overdose (The Final Trip)’ than it did the late hours weirdo groove Dana/Globus had made it into. I knew I had to roll things back. I decided to quit my Multisex playlist completely and switch to the Globus one, in an attempt to recapture the vibe I’d been casting around for. And who should come to the rescue but, of course, Ali Berger. His track ‘Eve’, from (I think) his first ever vinyl release back in 2016, was exactly what I had wanted, and the validation from the crowd (and CS) set me back on an even keel. The irony was, I only had time for two more tracks before I finished.
BONUS SELECTION
RadioNasty – Radio 3 (EPM, 2011)
I found this tune on the same EPM Music compilation ‘Sick Bam Stab’ appears on, when I listened on Friday afternoon after arriving in London from Berlin. Dana had finished at Globus around 6.30am that morning and I’d thought I’d have time for a mini-afters at Gwenan’s before going to the airport for my flight. But my brain wasn’t calculating properly, and by the time we arrived at G’s — having picked up mimo supplies (prosecco and orange juice) at Edeka — I realised I only had 10 minutes before I had to leave. So I downed a mimosa and said my sorry goodbyes, leaving the crew to what by all accounts was a delightful mini sesh. I won’t recount my whole journey from deepest Karlshorst to even deeper Kensington, but suffice to say it was torrid and involved dropping a bunch of bananas as I ran through Brandenburg airport, Mario Kart style. By the time I got to London I was exhausted, but I was also inspired by the night at Globus and I wanted to capitalise on that inspiration by hitting bandcamp. On listening to this compilation, ‘Sick Bam Stab’ was clearly the standout but RadioNasty’s ‘Radio 3’ also caught my ear: gnarly breaksy electro with a raveface bassline, tough but also limber. I was planning to play fast (for me) to close Pumping Velvet at Dalston Superstore the next night, so I thought why not, let’s give it a whirl.
Cut to Saturday night and I started my set at 1am, taking over from Sam PV and Sofie K, whose poppy warmup had got the Superstore basement jumping, again at under 130bpm. I really wanted to play Kryptic Minds and Leon Switch’s ‘Minor Nine’ at some point, as well as DJ Assault’s evergreen ‘Ass And Titties’, but both of those would only make sense at around 140bpm or more, so we had to get there somehow. I stuck on a drum track (Dorisburg’s ‘Computer Drumming 135’) and shanked the pitch up. Soon enough we were in the mid-to-high 130s, I was mashing up Will Hofbauer’s ‘8 Bar Baile’ with Roska’s ‘Heung-Min Son’, and everything felt right with the world. I was cueing up ‘Radio 3’ when my friend Malcolm noticed the track name, turned to me and said “wow, really going for the curveballs!” It took me a moment to get the joke but when I did it gave me great pleasure to reply: “It’s my dad’s favourite!”
Toasty – Splash (Destructive, 2006)
Not long after ‘Minor Nine’ (which I paired with the long-serving acappella of ‘Work That’ by Black Electric), I dropped Stefflon Don’s ‘Dip’, a special treat for Sam PV. I mixed out of it into ‘Splash’ by Toasty, a dubstep classic and also — for me and those of us who spent years listening to it obsessively — forever associated with the recording of Ricardo Villalobos’s extraordinary Fabric 7th birthday set back in 2006. One of the many records I bought off the back of that recording, it’s nonetheless one I rarely roll out, not only because I think it loses something pitched down, but also because it’s rather unfriendly to DJ with. On Saturday I made sure it would work, cutting the lengthy beatless intro and pretty much slamming it into the end of ‘Dip’ at its original speed. Pleased with myself, and with the reaction of the crowd, I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction before I moved on to the next tune. That was the exact moment someone stepped up to the front of the booth to show me their phone screen — one of only two people to do this over 8.5 hours of play time this weekend. On the screen were three words in large font, strangely distributed down the screen as if they’d used word art to write them: “JUNGLE / HOUSE / DNB”. Was it a request? If so, it was a confused one. Was it a comment on the music? If so, spot on, since for me ‘Splash’ — and dubstep more generally — splits the difference between all three genres. I looked at the person helplessly and shouted “I don’t understand!!” before turning back to the CDJs. They didn’t come back.
BONUS SELECTION
Laven & MSO – Looking For God (Klang Elektronik, 2007)
This long weekend actually became a bit of a tribute to epochal mixes of the 00s. At Globus I paid tribute to the aforementioned Daniel Bell mix CD. At PV I played ‘Splash’ and thought of Ricardo’s fabric bday sesh. And inspired by a conversation about that same fabric mix earlier in the day, I bought the file of ‘Looking For God’ and then played it at Multisex. I’ve owned the tune on vinyl since I first heard that fabric set and, I think, played it probably only once that whole time. It’s too weird, too brazenly druggy to feel appropriate in most settings I get booked in. Turns out 5.30am Multisex was exactly the right time, and I got a thrill from seeing the YGLFPs bopping around to the full 9 minutes of this truly wonky 2008 throwback.
Rudolf C – Lattice (Data Disk, 2023)
Speaking of druggy clubby things, I might have mentioned this before but one of my main preoccupations at the moment DJ-ing wise (I mean concerning the actual act of DJing, not all the social crap around it) is how to access a certain ‘clubbiness’ — related to ‘drugginess’ — that I see other DJs actively produce, but which I seem to only access sort of by accident. I notice myself getting into this vibe in passing, but then it’s as if by noticing it I undo it, and I usually lose it within a transition or two. It’s not that I can’t ever achieve a flow. My sets at Globus on Thursday and PV on Saturday prove (in my humble opinion) that I can reach a flow with some reliability. But they’re different kinds of flow. At PV I did what I tend to call (self-deprecatingly, and probably annoyingly) my ‘wedding music’ thing, which means a jukebox approach to a set where essentially I’m smashing out party bangers with very quick but well-crafted mixing. I’m pretty good at this by now, to the point where I’d say it’s my wheelhouse and default option. At Globus, by contrast, I did my ‘first tunes of a set’ thing, by which I mean those two or three tracks I always play first to calm my nerves and cleanse the dancers’ collective palate before deciding where we should all go; except on Thursday I extended this vibe across the first 90 minutes or so, gradually expanding the sound and energy but never quite releasing into a more wedding-y vibe.
Neither of these flows is the one I’m currently fascinated about trying to reproduce, this clubby, druggy flow that I think actually has little to do with individual songs or musicality or familiarity or patience, and everything to do with dualities of urgency and stasis, pressure and weightlessness, tight control and loss of control, drama and, simultaneously, weirdly, a sense of banality. Like, when I hear it I think to myself, “fuck me this is the clubbiest druggiest thing I’ve ever heard”, while also thinking to myself, “I’ve heard this before, and I love it”. Energy is clearly the key, a certain energy, and it’s pretty telling that the DJs who’ve spoken about their work in these terms (thank you, as always, The Art of DJing) talk about organising their music by energy rather than sound or genre. It’s a sound that is clearly made for big clubs, big festivals, big stages, but for that reason feels like something you can’t really learn outside of those settings. It’s almost as if it requires you, as a DJ, to be exposed to this environment of mass intensity, drugs and drama a sufficient number of times to be able to plug into, hold onto and learn to massage the vibe. At times it comes off as a kind of well-guarded secret, known only to an exclusive club of successful DJs that I’ve heard do it and I respect very highly — Ben UFO, CCL, Objekt. I suspect they may have formed a cult. Anyway, I want to learn how to do it more regularly myself.
Such were the fantasies swimming round my head as I watched Call Super do it too on Sunday morning. As promised, they’d started their set softly, and when I came back in after a breather out on the terrace they were moving between fine loopy house and the dreamy Detroit of D Wynn’s remix of ‘R-Theme’. But then as the sun gradually moved over the top of the Watergate building, thus no longer flooding the room with light, the whole vibe of the room shifted to a more nighttime feel again (this at around 10am) and, whether conscious of this or not, CS shifted the music too, pressing on the gas pedal and delivering the infamous ‘slap’ I’m always going on about. But it wasn’t a wedding-style slap, it was that clubby, druggy, pressure-meets-stasis-meets-abandon-meets-we-could-do-this-for-hours flow I’m so curious about. I watched from my vantage point behind the booth. Was it the mixing? They were definitely doing much longer transitions than I usually do, playing with the EQ and filters and doing the odd fader trick, presumably not only for the effect but also just to keep themselves entertained. Was it the selection? The tracks became less song-structured, more linear, an 8-minute tribal drum number seemingly the gateway into even longer-form druggy West Coast house. At a certain point, they dropped a pumped up version of The Fog’s ‘Been A Long Time’ — or was it the acappella over another track? — and the effect on the room was insane: what had been a half-full dancefloor for the measured first half of their set was now a throbbing mass of YGLFPs positively leaping with excitement. CS might tell me that it’s the easiest thing in the world to reach that vibe, but to my eyes and ears it really looked like Club DJ Alchemy.
The one moment during my Globus set — and one of a handful during my Multisex set — where I felt like I momentarily accessed what I’m talking about, was dropping ‘Lattice’ by Rudolf C, the standout track from his recent EP on the Data Disk imprint. Ostensibly a stripped-down drum loop with various squiggles and a dirty syncopated slap bass tone that only comes in after two and a half minutes, something about the rhythms and pressure and sheer insistence of the track elevate it from mere tool into something mindbending, and I think that’s what makes it a relevant illustration. When I look at my records and digital library, most of my music seems either too musical, too song-like, too delicate, too abstract or specific to be suitable for this vibe. Do I just need to buy more music? But then of course I ask myself the question…if I get better at actual DJing, can I make the music I already have work in that vibe anyway?
That, for now, is the project.
BONUS SELECTION
Nubirth – ‘Anytime’ (Nu Jak, 1996)
By this time I’d been in the club for 10 hours and, after the exertions of the previous three days and nights, I’d reached my bodily limit. Torn between staying longer — I wanted to hear the final hour of CS’s set — and sparing my body more punishment, I took the executive decision to drag myself away. Having gathered up my stuff, I said my rueful goodbyes and started to head out of the room. As I exited, CS dropped Nubirth’s ‘Anytime’ and I very nearly dropped my bags to run back in and join the throbbing YGLFP mass.
I didn’t, but that wasn’t the end of it. After a few hours of rest and some food at home, I made the twenty minute walk back to Watergate for a second round: Fais Le Beau followed by Stella Zekri closing upstairs, and six hours of BASHKKA closing downstairs. Keeping it brief, FLB was playing a lovely deep set of house, with several recognisable samples adding a pop spice. Only occasionally did I find the pop elements a bit too much, otherwise it was the perfect vibe for that time on the upper floor, everyone dancing and feeling anticipation for the evening ahead.
Meanwhile downstairs BASHKKA was doing very BASHKKA things, the kind of rolling we’re-here-for-six-hours set I find super impressive and enjoyable for about half an hour but then hit a wall of linearity, not just in the music but in the mixing style too. It’s undeniably a super effective style; it might even overlap a little with the clubby/druggy thing I talk about above. Yet as I listened I couldn’t help feel it missed some colour or levity or contrast. Case in point: when she played Todd Terry’s ‘Baby Can You Reach’, which I had also played that morning, to my ears this usually exuberant track sounded flattened out amid the relentlessly streamlined style and selection. The vibe in the room also felt quite dark — people were moving, sure, but you weren’t quite sure if it was out of pleasure.
In stark contrast, upstairs Stella Zekri was whacking up the faders like nobody’s business on a string of fabulous house bangers and it felt like a very different party. I did some shots of Berliner Luft, nibbled on a pill, drank several more beers than was strictly necessary and shook my ass at the side of the booth, watching the room gradually fill up as Stella drew everyone in. I was happy to see the crowd at this juncture less as a homogenous mass of YGLFPs, and more as a diverse group of people all just wanting to get down. Perhaps that’s the difference between morning and evening Multisex. But I also think it had something to do with the music, and the irreplaceable effect of real musical dynamics.
Destiny’s Child – Independent Women Pt. 2 (Columbia, 1999)
I’ve run out of steam so this final anecdote is a quick one. Two weeks ago, at the mini Welt Discos afters at my house in Lisbon, we listened to the entirety of The Writing’s On The Wall double CD. When it got to ‘Independent Women Pt. 2’ I thought to myself “hey, I should play this at Pumping Velvet”. The idea — and the song — was stuck in my head from that moment on, going round and round with it’s weird dissonant xylophone intro and amazing bridge.
Skip to two weeks later and I’m walking into the pre-PV DJ dinner with Sam and what should the restaurant be playing but ‘Independent Women Pt. 2’. “Oh my god!” I blurted out. “What?” said Sam. “Nothing,” I said, holding my tongue to make the surprise all the sweeter. At 2.30am that night I finally dropped it and the room popped off.
SO SATISFYING.
BONUS SELECTION
Sugababes – ‘Little Lady Love’ (London, 2000)
I also played this expressly for Sam, the first time I’ve dropped it, at least a couple of years after he originally told me about it. Dalston Superstore’s sweaty basement, the man himself next to the booth, the crew all grooving…this is why we love PV.
Two final notes
1) Across these three parties, several strangers told me they read this newsletter and that they enjoy doing so. Perhaps that’s why I’ve written so much here, because I hear that people out there are interested in my inner world and feel it connects to theirs. Anyway, I’m very thankful for the feedback.
2) A million thank yous to Oliver Hafenbauer from Die Orakel and the Globus team, Sam PV and the Dalston Superstore team, and the Multisex and Watergate teams. This past week has meant a lot to me.