Nic Fanciulli brings a Montreal warehouse to life

Nic Fanciulli brings a Montreal warehouse to life

12 May, 2009 | 8.20AM

• Written by: Industry Boy
• Filed under: Music News: nic fanciulli, nic fanciulli tour

A solitary male, all in black, stands outside 13 King Street in Montreal on a Saturday night. Rain patters quietly onto the concrete sidewalk, forming pools illuminated by dark yellow street lights. Opposite an old factory mourns. The road is dead.

A car approaches, drives past the man and stops. Inside, two girls squint through a dripping car window, smile at each other and pull up to the sidewalk. The car’s headlights disappear, and the girls climb out.

Their stiletto heels scrape on the ground as they head towards the man. They whisper something to him in French, and he swings open a heavy metal door behind him.

For the briefest of moments, loud music and bright light bursts out of the door swallowing the two girls in an instant. The old factory opposite, surprised by the sudden activity, smiles at the sound of modernity and basks in the warmth of the light. The door closes and the road returns to silence.

A few moments later, a woman wearing a tshirt and tracksuit bottoms appears in front of the man. She looks up at the shadow and says, “Excuse me, I live here, I live upstairs, I’m not going to complain, you should let me in for free, I like to party and if I’m going to be kept up all night by this noise I should be allowed in for free.”

The man pauses for a moment, and stoops down to open the metal door again. The light engulfs the woman, and in her place stands a tattooed man in an afro wig and a vest. He lights up a cigarette and exhales. The road is quiet.

A white car appears at the end of the street, and creeps menacingly forwards. Both the door man and the wig man watch it like mice calculating the danger of an approaching cat. Perhaps it’s nobody. The white car keeps crawling. As it draws nearer, its dormant blue lights and a sign on its side confirm the threat. Police.

It pulls up next to the wig man and a window slowly unwinds. A hand signals for the wig man to approach. He bends down and speaks to two policemen inside. His identification is checked and after some sharp words, he turns on his heel and heads back inside the metal door, his afro ruffled, his face blank. Through the brief rainbow that appears from the doorway, the old factory dances.

Inside a group of strangers stand in line next to some plastic portable toilets. The wig man walks straight past them bumping into a smiling guy in a hoodie. “What’s going on dude?” he asks, holding up his hand for a high five. Oblivious, the wig man keeps walking and enters an adjacent room where the light is much darker and the music much louder.

A speaker stack groans under the stabbing bass weight of Paul Harris & Alex Tepper ‘Ternia’. Next to it, a glistening banner reads, GU Global Underground.

The wig man squeezes through moving shadows and shining teeth, past a man who drinks vodka straight from a bottle and a girl who smells sweet, underneath glowing orange latterns that swing from the ceiling, through a herd of shouting dancers, over a blowing metal fan, and up a step to a small makeshift DJ booth.

There stands Nic Fanciulli, who is playing the breakdown of Pitto ‘Feeling’ at half volume before pushing the sound back up to its full level for the drop. The crowd in front of the DJ fall over themselves.

The wig man taps Nic Fanciulli on the shoulder firmly. “You have two choices,” he says. “Either you continue your set at half volume, or the police shut us down.” Exactly 35 hours earlier Nic had said, “No DJ likes to be told what to do.”

Nic Fanciulli leaves the warehouse loft party at 13 King Street having played two enjoyable hours, 30 minutes short of his scheduled time. By 3am, the party finishes and its attendees scatter in cars in all directions.

The old factory weeps once again. The road sinks into its watery grave. For a moment, there was life.

Photos: Courtesy of www.nocturnalmagazine.net

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