flying solo

Kicked off the weekend with my flatmates at small bar called 'The Laden'. A cool little venue that stays open well into the next day (one flatmate crawled home around 8am).

Following this, decided to check-out a gig in Friedrichshain, at the questionably-titled, 'Suicide Circus'. In particular,  I wanted to hear headliner Blake Baxter do his thing. It was billed as a "DJ & live set combination", with Blake playing alongside a "[Roland] 808, 909, 303 and 404".


Here's an old (1987) Blake Baxter track I used to bounce along to in late high-school (around '04-'06, I remember digging up some early house & techno gems):

(bouncing staccato bass-line from 0:53, like dribbling a dozen basket balls at once - siick)





The warm-up jockees were all percussion and no melody. Though I arrived around 1am, come 3am it seemed like the same track was still spinning... not much was happening.

Mr Baxter took to the stage sometime after 3. His sound was tougher and more-percussive than I expected, but brought some vocals and melody into the mix. In terms of his set-up, it looked like he was running the Roland TR-909 as the main rhythm-machine and syncing the rest to this (or mixing into this on CDJs - didn't see him spinning vinyl, but I wasn't watching the booth for the whole gig, so maybe he did later - there were definitely turntables set-up).



Regarding the venue; there was plenty of space in the main-room and a solid PA; four large boxes suspended form the ceiling in each corner, angled at the crowd (kind of like Revolver's main-room PA in Melbourne, but each speaker was about four times the size). Pretty sure the subs were mounted on the floor.

In terms of vision, it had a dark/blue-light kind of vibe. Personally, I thought the decor was kind of tacky... with things stuck to wall in Pac-man-esque kind of patterns, and stencils of E... all a bit 90s rave, perhaps? (as a side-note: seen a few posters - mainly in the touristy parts of town - pushing 90s-styled parties... geared towards late 20-something/early 30-something tourists hankering after that cheesy pre-millennium vibe, I guess...?).

 I got the impression that the crowd consisted of many tourists... despite all this, I was there till sunrise. Won't rush back to the Suicide Club, but if an act I particularly wanted to see was playing there, I'd definitely consider another visit (it sounded good - which counts for something)...