Saturday, January 09, 2010

Modeselektor @ Barbi Club

Techno, dub, and DnB DJ's on the bill. The schizophrenic Modeselektor as headliners. The last minute change of venue for an event that looked like it wasn't going to happen three days ago. I really had no idea what to expect from this.

It was the best of all possible scenarios. The crowd was a mixture of heads from all the aforementioned genres, a real melting pot of the city's club culture. Enthusiasm levels were high, the faithful and curious were prepared to follow the gig to whichever venue would agree to host it. Skillatone's opening DnB set slowly ramped up the energy level toward Modeselektor's 3AM appearance, and they certainly didn't disappoint with a set mostly composed of highlights from "Happy Birthday". The innate goofiness of some of Modeselektor's music comes off a lot better when the beats are thumping out of the speakers in a large club than when listening to it at home. Clapping and pogoing to animated visuals of sad-eyed monkeys just can't be created in your living room. Into this soup of colourful funk, the surprise addition of Moderat's "No. 22" stuck out conspicuously, a less manic interlude of more streamlined techno and minimal visuals featuring overlapping geometric shapes slowly stretching and folding. Congrats to all involved at making this show happen at the 11th hour.

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