House Is A Feeling

It’s good living 10 minutes from T Bar. It means that when you go out for a drink with your flatmates, and then decide to stay out beyond pub closing times, you can just say “let’s go to T Bar” and suddenly you’re getting a great fix of house and techno music. In Dublin I’d have to walk for 10 minutes to be 10 minutes away from anything. And that thing would be a park or a newsagents.

Last night was an impulse decision, maybe the best way to go clubbing. I had no idea who was playing and hadn’t planned to go along. There was no queue and it was emptyish at about 11.30, which my friends tell me is unusual. The door policy had a weird feeling: you knew you’d get in but not before it was made clear that you were being assessed. In the end I interrupted the guy’s questions to ask who was playing. Maybe they don’t want people coming in unless you like the music. Who knows? I stopped short of saying “I really love house music, honest mister”.

It turned out the DJs were Carsten Jost from Dial, and Carsten Klemann from My My. There was no sign of Jost though. Klemann played for the entire time we were there, from 11.30 or so until 4, and it was a brilliant DJ set, as good as you’ll see. When we got in he was playing Mountain People, and there was plenty of current stuff in that vein like Dennis Ferrer and Sascha Dive. It was a party set as much as a house one though, peppered with hits like “Erotic City”, “Miura”, and Herbert’s remix of “Sing It Back”.

He also gets huge bonus points for playing Underground Resistance’s “Transition”, which I haven’t heard in a club since 2003 or so. It still makes my head spin, and I’ve always loved the intense sombre message in that spoken vocal. The other record he played that was one of my favourites when it came out was the King Britte mix of Josh One’s “Contemplation”. That’s from around the same time but it’s been popping up quite a bit lately, I’m sure I’ve droned on about it before somewhere on this blog!

What a great record it still is, like the 00s “Voodoo Ray”. It’s also a good reminder of the last time when lots of worthwhile crossover records were house. That pre-minimal age seems like aeons ago. I guess 5/6 years is aeons ago in dance music. Or maybe it should feel even more distant than it does.

I’m not sure how representative last night was, but I can see myself spending plenty of time in T Bar, especially since it’s free. As for Klemann, I can only say that if you get a chance to see him then go for it. It was the sort of set you don’t stop dancing to, which probably explains why I feel like I’ve run a marathon this morning.

Praise be to Jesus for giving us Monday off. I don’t know about you, but for me chocolate eggs and two days off are easily enough to dismiss the age old questions of why bad things happen to good people, or why it is morally wrong to stop AIDS via contraception etc.