House Is A Feeling

Anyone who has been to lots of clubs, and especially those who DJ, will know just how much nights can vary. Sometimes the DJ is bad. Sometimes the venue is wrong. Sometimes the crowd just aren’t right, or the soundsystem is crap. Plenty of the time all of these factors are the problem.

So as a techno fan you always have this utopian ideal of the perfect party, the one where people go wild to records that aren’t even well known, where everyone who is there fully wants to be there and knows exactly what music they’re there to hear. And this weekend, on the roof of the Hotel Silken in Barcelona, Mobilee and Spectral made a rather good attempt at putting on that perfect party.

After getting your hands stamped (with cultlike Mobilee logos) you got the lift up to the tenth floor of the hotel, a sort of rooftop terrace with a tiny swimming pool. The view over Barcelona was considerably more beautiful than the view of filthy walls you usually get in clubs, and as soon as we got in Sebo K was taking over from Pitchfork columnist Phil Sherburne (Phil was DJing, not writing!).

He played for the next 3 or 4 hours, to a crowd that seemed to be 99 per cent producers or label owners. It was a little weird as a lowly journalist, meeting people in the lift and saying “yes I write about records” and then asking what they do and hearing “I am Pan-Pot!” in response. But that was the nature of the atmosphere there. I reckon if someone had bombed that rooftop, that would have been the end of good house and techno.

That in itself is no cause for a good party though, I mean, some of the more hardcore readers might wince at the idea of an “industry event”. But the (merited) revulsion towards that sort of thing comes from bad product launches with B-list celebs, later discussed by some airhead, not Sebo K playing records by DJ Koze, Lazy Fat People, Polder etc on a sunbaked roof in Barcelona for 4 hours.

In fact, if anything, the crowd made the event, with people really partying and cheering records that aren’t earbleeding anthems. Of course earbleeding anthems are great too, but when you go clubbing in Dublin all your life, you’re used to the tempo and tone of the music on a night sharply going up and then peaking for the end of the club at 3.

As for the crowd, I probably didn’t recognise half of the producers or DJs anyhow. I like to think I know a lot of records but I don’t think I’d recognise Steve Bug in a crowd, nor do I really mind too much about who is who. Most of these guys are utterly faceless afterall when you’re deciding which arrangement of repetitive beats to buy and play.

I did see people carrying a lot of weird merchandise, perhaps designed to make clear their association with a label. I honestly can’t say I need to own a Stil Vor Talent granny shopping bag though!

One of the really great things about the day was just seeing the music in its natural habitat. I play minimal house or techno a lot of the time in a radio studio in Merrion Square (Dublin), and occasionally in clubs (but never quite as deep stuff there, just wouldn’t work here, so I veer towards techno). In the radio studio there’s never anyone there and you never are sure how many are listening.

It’s a real labour of love a lot of the time and you kind of have to have faith in the sounds themselves, and in their popularity abroad and elsewhere. Because of this it was really nice to see the music I like perfectly contextualised at such an atmospheric daytime event.

At a party like this you get to see the music working in ways you haven’t seen before, but you always instinctively imagined were the ways in which it worked. I suspect anyone living far away from the minimal epicentre would feel this way too.

(You all know this one, but if you don’t it’s Claude Vonstroke-Whose Afraid of Detroit, possibly one of the remixes, on Dirtybird)

Perhaps this power in places and environments that are different to the traditional club space is a reason why minimal or German house music has become so popular around Europe, because these sort of parties can happen every week there. The vibe of this minimal house over long periods of time is really potent and cumulative.

Sebo K’s set was very well paced and enjoyable. He started off with short mixes and really allowed tracks to breathe for the first few hours, building a really good atmosphere with no real pressure to get people dancing. Then as the sun began to set he cranked things up ever so slightly, and towards the end dropped the likes of “Sideleaps”, and surprisingly enough DJ Koze’s “Don’t Feed The Cat”. At this stage people were starting to really dance and cheer, it all seemed so natural, not to me, but the people there probably go to parties like this every week, and it was nice to enter that world.

I can remember seeing someone on Sebo K’s Myspace refer to him as “Sebo the Pimp” recently, and at the time I thought that this was a weird description. But having seen him play I can now concede what should have been obvious, that whoever said that knows him a lot better than I do! I think the videos here illustrate the “pimp factor” anyhow.

Sebo K playing The Viewers-Blank Images (Lazy Fat People Mix)-Audiomatique, to a really cool atmosphere.

Going back to the people, anyone I spoke to was really friendly (though it’s possible they were high! I don’t think so though). It was nice to finally meet Phil Sherburne after years of reading his stuff online in publications and on messageboards. He said “you’re the guy who tells everyone on ILM to fuck off when I want to!”.

I also met plenty of the RA crew (stay tuned for some Ronan/Resident Advisor news as promised, very soon). And I met Jeremy Caulfield of Dumb Unit in the lift at one stage, he was a really friendly guy and gave me some records. That was cool, though I had a lot of trouble getting them back to Dublin! I still haven’t checked if they’re warped yet, but if not you can expect to hear them on the show soon.

I think I met Will Saul of Simple/Aus briefly, and he seemed a very nice guy. However it wasn’t just minimal house people who were at this party. If you’ve got a keen eye you may be able to spot (in one of the videos) a distinctly non-minimal artist who was responsible for one of the biggest crossover dance debuts of the last few years. He seems to be enjoying himself too, perhaps looking for ideas for his next album! Can you see him? Keep trying!

If that guy being there isn’t odd enough, then rumour of the day is that Woody Allen was on Phil Sherburne’s guestlist for this party. Now that really would have been ridiculous! Or would it?