Heard In Berlin

Heard In Berlin

5 October, 2009 | 9.05AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: dj charts, greco-roman, heard in berlin, totally enormous extinct dinosaurs

Walls crumble and paint peels at Villa in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district, a grandiloquent name, for a former squat.

With gothic arches, sweeping staircases, and bold columns, this three-storey mansion might once have served an altogether more illustrious purpose, but like so many abandoned buildings in this changing city, it has been remixed and rejuvenated by a new generation.

How perfectly suited Grego-Roman’s music is then, to a building caught in the headlights of modernity.

Up the rich wooden staircase Paul Fowler from Berlin’s dubstep night Sub:stance plays emphatic house classics from yesteryear, a nostalgic collection of vinyl; as old as the people it moves.

Gone but not forgotten, Fowler drops and scratches rave anthems and squiggly acid bollocks by Altern 8 and other punks which includes Hard House’s ‘Check This Out’, and Marshall Jefferson’s ‘Move Your Body’.

At a cute bar in a side room, Greco-Roman’s Alexander Waldron explains where it all began. “We’re a party collective that happens to release a few records every now and then,” he says. “At first it started out in London with me and Joe Hot Chip, and then Ross Allen, Lorenzo Fruzza, who does all of our cartoons, and Jeremy Dade joined the collective.

“Four of us worked at Island Records, and we decided to start throwing our own parties as we felt London’s club scene was a bit stale. We began with illegal parties about three years ago in North London warehouses, and since then we’ve done parties around the world in art galleries, railway arches, boats, and other odd venues. Our parties at Villa are pretty close to what we did in London as they’re not actually legal.”

Greco-Roman - for those that don’t follow wrestling - is an Olympic sport, in which sweaty men bear hug and dominate each other to victory. It’s all so very homo-erotic, which the boys have captured brilliantly with their artwork, yet the party collective hardly ever advertise.

“We hardly do any marketing because I’ve always worked in marketing and to do it as my hobby would drive me insane, so it’s genuinely word-of-mouth,” says Alex. “We treat it more like a house party than a club night, and the majority of the crowd are friends, or friends of friends.

“That’s why there’s always such a good, house party atmosphere, and because we all work in the industry, we can pull a lot of favours and so far we’ve managed to get over 500 people to every party we’ve thrown.”

Waldron takes to the decks downstairs to warm up a bustling high-ceilinged space, which looks like it might have been used as a family dining room at one point.

Dave Aju ‘Anyway’ keeps the room throbbing with its old skool stabs and vocals, as people begin to filter in from the rest of the house.

Green Velvet ‘Bathroom’ brings a wacky yet soulful vibe to the proceedings, before a dub of Human League’s evergreen pop treat ‘Don’t You Want Me’ mixes into Marc Houle’s ‘Techno Vocals’. It’s a happy blend of new wave, techno, and wonky electro, that sums up Greco-Roman’s playfulness, and lack of respect for genre purism poignantly.

Later Waldron explains that the Greco-Roman Soundsystem is all about the myriad of sounds that have made dance music great over the last 20 years. “I’m really into old acid house, ska house and hip house, and normally about half of my sets are records that are 20 years old,” he says. “I usually play a bit more italo at the beginning of my sets too.”

Hot City’s ‘No More’ might well sum up the Greco-Roman approach. A gobsmacking mix of piano house, loopy techno, soulful vocals, wonky electro bass, and masterful arrangement - it’s the coup de grâce of Alexander Waldron’s set, and it ends the life of one dancefloor, and replaces it with something far more raucous.

“Turn around Berlin, I’m over here, here, here...” says Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, a UK-based producer, before beginning an impressive and fluid live set. The audience turns to face him at the other end of the room.

Over the next hour, the UK act who is signed to Greco-Roman’s label plays only his own tracks and delivers one of the best live club sets I’ve seen in a long time.

Warped bass hugs the walls, ecstatic melodies cause delight, and filthy low-slung breaks belches from the stage, all wrapped up in a nonsensical bow of synthesized goodness, that is otherwise known as electro house.

‘Bournemouth’ and ‘Sickly Child’ exhaust the floor, so it’s time for a breather on the Villa staircase, where it’s impossible not to stare at a Barbie doll with a clamourous boob job.

Electro house is a rare occurrence in Techno City, yet Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs’ music is far from the formulaic electro house that has plagued the genre in recent years.

With its clever rhythms, unexpected twists, and refined style, his music keeps people smiling and bopping. Its funky enough to appease the house crowd, yet raw enough to please the techno heads.

As the night hops and skips joyfully along, the music bounces like a tennis ball in a dustbin from one side of the spectrum to the other. Michel Cleis ‘La Mezcla’, Coyu & Uner ‘Raw Sweat’, and Riva Starr and Noze’s soon to be massive Balkans-styled fidget house anthem ‘I Was Drunk’ (due on Beatport October 16th) keeps the mood light and fun. Later on in the night Jesse Rose and Oliver $’ Made To Play Dub of ‘Got Yr Thing’ by Drums of Death lifts energy levels.

And so it goes, that Berlin is an odd place, where the ramshackle has become exuberant, and the functional has become bizarre. Abandoned mansions, dilapidated power stations - this city is a fertile ground for dance music’s freest thinkers.

Electro house is underground, techno is on the streets. The tables have turned in the city of turntables, but it protests not, almost as if it had listened to The Nightwriters ‘Let The Music Use You’ in 1988, and decided to let go.

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