Modeselektor and Siriusmo lay it down in a Hackney warehouse.
It's not surprising that the queue establishes itself pretty definitely about an hour before the venue is even due to open. The line-up is a thing of beauty. Topping off the bill and quivering on everyone’s lips are Modeselektor – aka Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary, the Berlin duo who genuinely defy pigeon-holes. Taking their perfect name from a setting on the Roland RE-201 Space Echo analog delay efects unit, they have been around for years (since 1995 actually), releasing on Ellen Allien's BPitch Control label before creating Monkeytown Records. Storming the battlements with their bass and disregard for rules, they occupy a very different space to many more commercial producers – the tunes are not in any way formulaic or predictable.
Taken from a production ethos of 'create, distort, recycle', their music doesn't neatly fit into one genre. They won 'Best Dubstep and Grime Artist' in the 2008 Beatport awards for example, but are also famed for their banging industrial techno. This is what they kick off with tonight, DJing for Black Atlantic – the promoters who have raised the bar with their underground tastes and genuinely innovative parties. As the warehouse space keeps filling and filling, they launch a huge, full-frontal techno attack with Pfadfinderei's visuals screaming a Modeselektor announcement in case there was any doubt they had begun.
Rewind a few beats, and it's the darkly uplifting work of Siriusmo that gets us here. His set is beautiful and heavy, all hands in the air as we throw our heads back and bask in the hypnotic, complex music. It washes over the crowd in waves; it feels very natural to be moving to these beats in this overheated Hackney warehouse. The strobe, the heat, the music combine to create an intensity which is rare in most humdrum London clubs. The crowd are cool, friendly and bang up for it. The drinks cold, the smoking section a welcome relief and the atmosphere is absolutely sizzling.
"Happy metal, hard rap, country-ambient, Russian crunk. We don’t like it if people tag us as being a certain style or school or scene or whatever. We don’t really care about all that." So say Modeselektor. And it's fairly evident as they launch into their music, that genres – or even leaps in tempo – are not a concern. Their set is like a journey, pushing on through the German techno pastures to IDM and pulsing electronica, lush synth pockets, and ending with a medley which is fairly Radiohead-esque in its avant-garde beauty. What is surprising is that halfway through, they get on the mic and do a bit of singing, one with a very sweet, high-pitched voice.
Both Siriusmo and Modeselektor share that echoing, warehouse sound. Techno yes, but with another essential ingredient. Really, what do you call this except pure rave?
Photos by the incredible Bartek Szadura.
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