As the eyes of the dance music world flick the short distance from Ibiza to Barcelona’s Sonar festival, Defected Simon Dawson reports on Classic’s off-Sonar party.
The two words I heard around town yesterday the most were (1) Seth and (2) Troxler, so it was clear the Visionquest party was ostensibly the place to be last night. Ripperton mentioned at dinner that there was around 45 parties going on in the city last night and proceeded to reel off what he thought were the best ones (a long list), which prompted some nervous glancing around the table. But no matter we thought; let’s crack on and do what we do.
We got to the venue and were immediately presented with a disaster. The promoter clearly hadn’t read any tech riders and there was only 2 CDJ2000’s in the whole building…and they were up in Room 3 for Derricks’ ‘Derrick Does Disco’ set. Matt Tolfrey arrived late and shall we say ‘refreshed’ from the Crosstown Rebels party and pointed out that he’d only brought USB sticks so couldn’t play on 1000’s. We had a problem.
But, we held the door, built a queue, decided to shut Room 3 for the time being and opened half an hour late. Meanwhile we switched all the equipment around which upset Derrick as he’d been prepping for his disco set for weeks, However after giving him some space, firing a number of dirty looks at his agent, a few hugs from Luke and letting him go wild on Tolfrey’s drinks rider, he seemed to relent.
Eats Everything’s unfortunate food poisoning meant that sadly he couldn’t make the party, so a shuffle about meant that Matt was to open Room 1. He played a lot deeper than normal, using it as an excuse to play all his Leftroom tracks he wouldn’t normally play including (the brilliant) Kate Simko & Jem Cooke record ‘Go On Then’ plus some forthcoming record made by Maceo Plex’s wife and her ex husband but engineered by Erick (!) who are called The Odd Couple (or something like that … fucking ACE by the way).
By the end of Matt’s opening set the main room was pretty much full and he handed over to Severino. Meanwhile Luke had persuaded god knows who to lend their laptop to Derrick and gave him a 10 minute crash course in Traktor so that he could do his ‘Does Disco’ set upstairs. A first for him, but got it sussed instantly and we opened upstairs with it immediately filling and the big black cloud above his head disappearing in a flash.
Severino in Room 1, in short KILLED IT. Seriously killed it; the best of the night for me. The room was filling quickly and he played accordingly – dark, dirty but immensely funky, parading around the booth like it was Sunday night down at Horse Meat Disco. Brett Johnson’s mix of Scoper & Bubba’s ‘I’m Satisfied’ sounding super-current, he jacked it with X-Press 2’s ‘Say What’ and brought the house down with Sneak’s ‘You Can’t Hide From Your Bud’, which – as ever – sounded like it was made yesterday.
“How d’ya follow that?” Luke asked as he hurriedly scrolled through his records. Opening with Honey Dijon’s new mix of DJ Ali ‘You Don’t Know’, he proceeded to play through two hours of forthcoming Classic releases mixed with current favourites; Deetron’s mix of Romathony ‘Bring You Up’, Groovestyle’s ‘Freedom Train’ and Kenny Larkin’s mix of ‘Future’.
By 4:30 when Derrick came down to play his ‘main set’ he was, in all honesty, pretty wasted on vodka… and that’s saying something coz he’s a dude who can take his booze. Clearly he’d been enjoying himself upstairs doing his disco thing, so his main set was a little lighter; not as tough or jacking as he normally is, and he was clearly in good spirits though and having fun. The opening record of some house mix of Artful Dodgers ‘Women Trouble’ (!) set the tone for the last 2 hours of the night; fast but funky but with a large slice of humour in it.
To summarise, it was ace. We smashed what was a really tough night to do a party. Installing confidence in the label and that they can still pull a crowd.
Till next time…
Luke Solomon's limited edition 'Lonely Dancer' vinyl is available to pre-order from Juno now
