The End Up : "Kontrol" w/Derek Plaslaiko
When Jeremy and I were in NY over Thanksgiving one of the highlights was certainly "Bunker" at Sub-Tonic, where we heard Derek Plaslaiko. We chatted him up a bit after his set and told him how much we'd love to hear him come play in San Francisco. This past Saturday we got our wish as Derek took to the decks at the End Up for the latest installment of Kontrol. As always, Kontrol can beat up pretty much any other DJ night in the city, but Derek's set was even better for the blast of techno that it brought to an evening that began to feel ominously like another night of tweaky End Up house.
In our typical can't-wait-to-get-to-the-party early arrival fashion (which is often in preparation for a let's-get-the-hell-out-of-here early departure), we were standing outside the End Up at 10 while Jeremy smoked a cigarette, waiting for the doors to open. Once past the rather intimate pat-down (it's rare that anyone puts a finger down my pocket these days) we had a drink and waited for the arrival of our party companions Mr. J and Mr. T. At that time someone who I think was Nikola Baytalla was on. His first few tracks were completely mesmerizing and brought Jeremy and I around to talking about the relationship between trance and techno, how the kids who were once into the crazy 303 acid lines of trance seemed to have made the shift to techno producers. But then, something happened between drink number two and a trip to the bathroom, a moment when the acid lines dropped, the beats deepened, and we were back in familiar house groove territory. This went on through the arrival of the Mssrs. Consonants and the switch of Craig Kuna. By this time the club had filled up considerably, and as we surveyed the scene on the back porch it once again seemed to be a mix of Mission meets Marina. Mr. T., who had met Mr. MDA earlier in the evening, nonetheless spent most of his time by the periphary of the dance floor, smiling, to be sure, but of the opinion that the music was just "too house" for him to find a groove. Mr. J and his companion Mr. D, meanwhile, were all arms-akimbo on the dancefloor.
Jeremy and I managed to have our fair share of dance floor fun, but the energy wasn't close to what we were expecting. Groovy, yes, and even stimulating, but I had spun through a practice set of Kompakt and Platzhirsch and other related discs before coming, and had been hoping for more of the sawtooth knarz than the mellower sounds of loping house basslines. Mr. J. and Mr. D departed around 2.00, and Jeremy and I waited for Derek's set out on the back porch, where we had an extended conversation about the merits of going out and what we got from it. Derek finally came on at 3, and we could tell that the evening had taken a significant turn. The crowd was smaller than the past two events, but we did run into more of the dedicated techno heads, and if it was less crowded, it was perhaps more spirited, driven as it was by the harder rhythms Derek was pumping through the system. Unfortunately, by 3.30 we were running out of energy, as was Mr. T, despite his earlier ingestion of stimulants, so we walked him back over to his small space, hung out for another hour or so, and then made our way home in the dark, cold, small hours.
I see from the Kontrol website that Alex Under is coming next, and I'll certainly look forward to that. But the Kontrol vibe seems to be undergoing a change, perhaps somewhat from the influence of the End Up's longstanding reputation as the home of San Francisco deep house, and also from the new crowd that comes there looking for what they know, rather than adventures in the land of crazy German techno. I'll continue to mark it on my calendar, and wish the Kontrol kids the best of luck in their new digs, but I hope that they will also find other venues and events where they can connect back to that underground vibe and push harder on the boundaries of San Francisco dance music.
In our typical can't-wait-to-get-to-the-party early arrival fashion (which is often in preparation for a let's-get-the-hell-out-of-here early departure), we were standing outside the End Up at 10 while Jeremy smoked a cigarette, waiting for the doors to open. Once past the rather intimate pat-down (it's rare that anyone puts a finger down my pocket these days) we had a drink and waited for the arrival of our party companions Mr. J and Mr. T. At that time someone who I think was Nikola Baytalla was on. His first few tracks were completely mesmerizing and brought Jeremy and I around to talking about the relationship between trance and techno, how the kids who were once into the crazy 303 acid lines of trance seemed to have made the shift to techno producers. But then, something happened between drink number two and a trip to the bathroom, a moment when the acid lines dropped, the beats deepened, and we were back in familiar house groove territory. This went on through the arrival of the Mssrs. Consonants and the switch of Craig Kuna. By this time the club had filled up considerably, and as we surveyed the scene on the back porch it once again seemed to be a mix of Mission meets Marina. Mr. T., who had met Mr. MDA earlier in the evening, nonetheless spent most of his time by the periphary of the dance floor, smiling, to be sure, but of the opinion that the music was just "too house" for him to find a groove. Mr. J and his companion Mr. D, meanwhile, were all arms-akimbo on the dancefloor.
Jeremy and I managed to have our fair share of dance floor fun, but the energy wasn't close to what we were expecting. Groovy, yes, and even stimulating, but I had spun through a practice set of Kompakt and Platzhirsch and other related discs before coming, and had been hoping for more of the sawtooth knarz than the mellower sounds of loping house basslines. Mr. J. and Mr. D departed around 2.00, and Jeremy and I waited for Derek's set out on the back porch, where we had an extended conversation about the merits of going out and what we got from it. Derek finally came on at 3, and we could tell that the evening had taken a significant turn. The crowd was smaller than the past two events, but we did run into more of the dedicated techno heads, and if it was less crowded, it was perhaps more spirited, driven as it was by the harder rhythms Derek was pumping through the system. Unfortunately, by 3.30 we were running out of energy, as was Mr. T, despite his earlier ingestion of stimulants, so we walked him back over to his small space, hung out for another hour or so, and then made our way home in the dark, cold, small hours.
I see from the Kontrol website that Alex Under is coming next, and I'll certainly look forward to that. But the Kontrol vibe seems to be undergoing a change, perhaps somewhat from the influence of the End Up's longstanding reputation as the home of San Francisco deep house, and also from the new crowd that comes there looking for what they know, rather than adventures in the land of crazy German techno. I'll continue to mark it on my calendar, and wish the Kontrol kids the best of luck in their new digs, but I hope that they will also find other venues and events where they can connect back to that underground vibe and push harder on the boundaries of San Francisco dance music.