Nic Fanciulli takes on Toronto

Nic Fanciulli takes on Toronto

9 May, 2009 | 8.34PM

• Written by: Industry Boy
• Filed under: Music News: global underground, nic fanciulli, nic fanciulli tour, saved records

Nic Fanciulli opens the heavy dark wood door of room 1511 in Toronto’s Pantages hotel. “Ugh, you woke me up,” he grunts, stroking his stomach.

It’s 12.59am. Nic’s DJ set starts in one minute and he’s still in his white boxer shorts. Luckily, Nic’s touring partner KOS is already at the venue This Is London, holding the fortified booth.

Nic jumps into a steamy bathroom as some coffee brews.

We had landed in Toronto three hours earlier, but we are still in Chicago. It had been a long night, and despite our best intentions we had found ourselves at 9am wandering the rush-hour clogged streets in search of our hotel having celebrated a successful start to the tour at an intimate afterparty.

Nic glugs down the “worst cup of coffee of his life”, grabs his laptop, jumps into the elevator, and slides into the awaiting black leather seats of a Lincoln limousine outside. The womb-like interior and the comfort it brings prompts a conversation about how brilliant it would be if somebody invented a sleeping bag or blanket that you could walk the streets in. Nic swears one already exists (it does, introducing the Snuggie.)

The car hurtles through the swirling yellow streets of Toronto’s Queen Street district. Young people, drinks, and laughter spill out onto the sidewalks, and through the limo’s tinted windows the world reels like a sepia-tinted movie.

We pull up to a black door with four security guards outside. There is no queue which is never a good sign, but it turns out that this is actually the back door to the club as the front is a bottleneck.

Nic is greeted by the promoter Jose Rodriguez, a short bald man with a grinning beard. He opens the door and immediately the security guards form a protective scrum around Nic and walk him inside like a boxer on his way to the ring. Nic’s ‘Eye of the Tiger’ turns out to be a driving wobbly house cut.

Wall to wall, skin to skin, This Is London more than lives up to its name with 800 people crammed into a sprawling two storey space that feels more like a two carriage London Underground Tube train.

After tunneling through the crowd, Nic makes it to the safety of the DJ booth where he finds KOS cooking a tech masterpiece. With shiny Global Underground banners twirling above a circus of dancers, and the heads of various Buddhas and Roman gods blessing the action from afar, there’s an atmosphere of elegant chaos unfolding honourably, like The Coliseum’s gladiatorial battles.

Four girls climb onto a podium and dance using all of their hair.

“Bloody hell, this is wicked,” says Nic, bending down to grab his headphones.

Taking over from KOS, Nic begins with a large beatless piece of music that hypnotises everyone in the room, sucking all eyes towards him like he’s a mystical vortex.

As the music builds upwards, a man in control of the lighting who goes under the name of Nick Lites, adds his own air raid siren sound effect that warns of a future moment of aggression. Sure enough, Nick Fanciulli plays Roska’s ‘Gone To A Better Place’, a garage-cum-tech-house cut that reeks of South London rudeness. This Is London after all.

The bitter harshness of a caffeine high on an empty stomach hits Nic. “Mate, that coffee made me feel horrible,” he says. “Get us some beers.”

Coronas arrive, and a few minutes later so does the familiar feeling of life surrounded by beats.

Outside the booth, the night snowballs elegantly as colour dances and people shine. A girl named Claire explains that “In Toronto, we know how to party,” and on cue, a man strips off his t-shirt and smiles at nobody.

The minimal melody of Marco Corola’s ‘Bloody Cash’ punches across the club, which is well received.

At around 3am, the dancefloor relaxes its grip, bringing some much needed air into the circulation.

Nic responds by digging deep into his classics collection, with the Alter Ego remix of Octave One ‘Blackwater’, Pitto’s ‘Feeling’ and the District One remix of Rejected ‘Let’s Go Juno’.

Ending his set with last night’s success story, a Skream dubsteb and drum & bass soundclash, the lights open up signaling the end.

We get dragged to an afterparty next to the hotel, but manage a great escape which our bodies thank us for later.

Exactly five hours later, Nic stands in room 1511 in Pantages hotel, in the same spot, in the very same way that I had found him.

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