Lawler and Audiofly take on San Francisco’s Harlot

Lawler and Audiofly take on San Francisco’s Harlot

27 October, 2008 | 3.46AM

• Written by: Industry Boy
• Filed under: Music News: audiofly, harlot

11.42pm Steve Lawler, manager Dave and a small entourage of San Francisco friends enter a backstreet glosser known as the Harlot.

It’s a plush kinda place, with a tightly designed interior that’s part goth, part hunting lodge.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t see the warehouse,” says one of the entourage as we walk towards the DJ booth.

Tonight’s party was supposed to be at a secret location, an illegal warehouse, but last week the cops busted the joint.

At the DJ booth we find British DJ twosome Audiofly warming up a crowd of about 100 people which is less than anticipated, but it’s a Sunday and the night is still young.

“We started out playing to an empty room,” says Anthony from Audiofly, shouting above the booth monitors.

“So we had to start really deep and stay deep all set, in a groove.”

12am Steve Lawler takes over as the room begins to get busier. It’s difficult however to see exactly how busy it is with the room being shrouded in near total darkness. 

Within four records he drops Phage & Daniel Dreier ‘Korgi Morgi’, which offers a dirty rumbling tech house bassline that gets the place thumping.

It’s starting to get really busy now, as San Francisco’s night freaks slowly come out of the weirdworks.

There are Sunday hedonists, weekend wasters, lonely gays and girls with afros occupying the dancefloor which is small and intimate.

There’s an unexpected energy about the club, like somebody forgot to tell these people that they have to get up for work in a few hours.

After an intense 10 minutes of SIS ‘Trompeta’, Lawler takes things chunkier and deeper with a triple whammy of chunky minimal techno (see ‘3 for 3’ below).

Things start to get really claustrophobic around the DJ booth as sycophants mix with photographers, groupies and wasters clambering for a better viewpoint.

You know there’s a good party going down when the DJ is caged in by human bodies and finger points, and tonight it’s like a zoo.

1.47am “Right, time to go and get my washing,” says Dave, who was delighted to discover a shabby looking washer and dryer in the club’s basement during load in.

He took the opportunity to wash some of his clothes in the machines, but it’s doubtful it’ll make any difference to the overall demeanor of the tour because there isn’t a shower on the bus and everybody smells of stale cigarettes anyway.

Back upstairs things are starting to wind down, but there’s still a good 150 people loitering around, some with bizarre levels of enthusiasm, others with obvious signs of fatigue.

It’s the end of the weekend for these people.

But for us, it’s just another night, another city, another club, another dancefloor.

It’s a graphic equalizer. Maxed out.

Three for three

Rather than just post up a tracklist, I decided to choose a random three-track period of the night to give you a better idea of the mood.

1.31am

Marco Nastik & DJ Evor ‘Sara Ra Undevici’
Off the back of the massive anthem ‘Trompeta’ by SIS, Lawler decided to take things deeper and more minimal with this wobbly groover by Marko Nastik and DJ Evor. It went down a treat.

Barem‘Seeee’ [Minus]
Argentinean wonderkid Barem’s new EP on Minus is getting some heavy support, and ‘Seeee’ seems to be the track that’s getting the most plays. In the mix, Steve takes the bass out of ‘Sara Ra Undevici’ to allow the dirty one note bass of ‘Seeee’ to flood through the gate. Using a Pioneer EFX-1000 he works a feedback loop around a tiny vocal snippet that builds and builds in intensity like a white noise rush. He takes it out just in time for ‘Seeee’ to kick in with its drums. Awesome reaction on the floor.

Luciano feat. Richie Hawtin ‘I Want To Fuck’ (Luciano Mix)
This track is a weird one. It doesn’t sound like a typical Luciano production, and Hawtin’s involvement is unclear in this one – he probably did the vocals. Either way, the dirty sex feel of the track, coupled with its minimal house pattern is the perfect fit for the 250 capacity room.

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