Krankbrothers

After a big WHP the night before and minimal amounts of sleep, I rolled out of bed on the afternoon of Saturday 23rd Oct, jumped in the shower, cracked open a Strongbow and started to prepare myself for a new musical experience. Krankbrothers playing in a bunker-style basement in Old Street.

To be honest I knew little about the Berlin techno DJs before the night. I had heard of Martin Landsky who was scheduled to play, and saw ID:Mobilee on the line up who were going to be playing a live set and had been promised by a friend that this would be a highlight of the night. I had never even heard of the venue before, despite living around the corner from it, but as the night was a highly recommended feature on Resident Advisor, I was fairly confident when buying a ticket that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

I headed down about midnight, after refueling with some food and a few beers. It was freezing cold in the queue and I was due to meet the others inside so I occupied myself by talking to two Canadian blokes who were stood behing me in the queue. They were pretty entertaining and completely clueless about the raving scene, let alone any electronic music so I tried to give them a quick 5 minute round up of everything I thought was important to know. The conversation quickly turned to ‘soccer’ and rather conveniently I was at the front of the queue and able to make my Houdini-style espcape from the pair of them.

Once my ticket had been checked in an entrance hall that looked like the reception area of fairly posh offices I made my way down into the basement and reassuringly was greeted at the top of the stairs by that familiar pounding of thick, heavy bass, which carried me with a sense of eager anticipation all the way down the stairs…

Upon entering the main room, I was greated by the sounds of Krankbrothers who were well into the swing of their first set of the night. It was a very uplifting and playful tech-house sound, which boded very well for the night ahead. The room held about 300 (extremely trendy and oh so Hoxton-styled) people at a squash so it wasn’t too hard to find my friends who had predictably set up a base right at the front of the dancefloor, near one of the sets of very impressive speakers.

I took a short video on my iPhone to give you a basic idea of the vibe at the moment when there was a fire juggler in the corner of the main room:

ID:Mobilee took to the decks at 1am for their live set. Rather disapointingly they were only scheduled to play for an hour, so I made sure I had a fresh beer in hand and was able to stay on the dance floor for the whole thing. The first 30 minutes or so was pretty slow to get going. Something you might expect for a 4 or 5 hour live set that can take its time developing. The second half was a lot more pleasing with the technical live skills of the DJs being evident. It was a good choice of tune selection with a lot of recognisable beats, my only criticism being that it really needed a second hour to fully deliver the rounded experience that I had been expecting.

The room had developed in a sweat box and was packed out by this point so it was definitely time to pop outside for some fresh air. As the building wasn’t designed as a club, we had to climb up the emergency exit stairs and out the fire excape to reach a make-shift smoking area, which rather confusingly brought you right out onto Great Eastern Street, by the bus stop.

After ten minutes to cool down, it was time to head back down and catch Martin Lanksky who was fifteen minutes into his set. I had never seen him DJ before but was more than pleasantly surprised. He had picked up where ID:Mobilee had left off. There was no warm up required, the crowd was ready and willing to get straight down to business.

After about an hour, my raving batteries started to flash on empty and my body started to slump towards the ground. I think after the previous heavy night I had reached my end and I decided to end on a high, rather than attempt to power through the remaining two hours, and made my exit. Despite it being cold, I opted for the relatively short walk home to cool off a bit.

As soon as my head hit the pillow of my bed I was out for the count and thankfully I remained that way for a good, long, much-needed recovery sleep. Probably a wise decision as I was fully aware that I had a big week ahead with a very exciting Wendesday night at Ministry planned…I guess I’ll see you on the dancefloor then.