Mainline feat. DJ Bone @ Mandarin Club, Sydney (08/02/07)
Techno is awesome. DJ Bone is awesome. Mainline is awesome. The end.
Okay, not really, but those four sentences would honestly suffice to describe how great Mainline’s return party featuring DJ Bone actually was. It’s been a long time between drinks for Methodixxx and company, however their triumphant return to Sydney’s party scene was met with welcome arms and (in this reviewer’s opinion at least) was a smashing success.
Arriving at the Mandarin Club, my crew and I snaked our way through a smokey lobby of poker machines, entered a service lift and made our way to the fourth floor. As the doors opened we were greeted by the sounds of the appropriately (albeit humorously no doubt) named DJ Supereverything. Laying down a dope set of diverse, melodic grooves that sounded heavily influenced by the likes of Moonbeam and Extrawelt, Supereverything slowly coaxed punters off their seats and onto the floor.
Mad Racket promoter and uber-cool DJ Simon Caldwell stepped up next, and over his one hour slowly upped the intensity of the music as well as the number of people on the dancefloor. Starting off low down, groovy and funky, Caldwell slowly built the sounds up towards some punchy, quirky acid house and warm Detroit grooves, occasionally interspersed with clicky minimal and tech house goodness and a little bit of booty house for good measure. And of course his mixing was tight as always.
Next up Mainline head-honcho Methodixxx took over the controls and played the final warm-up set of the night. Despite not having played out for over a year, Brad held it down very well, even mixing on three decks at times with frightening precision. A few hard, dark grooves here, some funky, jackin’ cuts there (including Ignition Technician’s extremely awesome Work It ), and splashes of Detroit everywhere else was the recipe for a perfect warm-up for DJ Bone, and by this stage the floor was heaving and I was ready to start yelling out “f*cking techno!”.
At 1am, Detroit’s DJ Bone – one of few remaining techno soldiers who haven’t jumped on the minimal bandwagon – made his way onto the stage to rapturous applause. The Detroit native played for nigh-on three hours, smashing out a diverse set that represented the multiple facets of techno. It was part funky, part tribal, part melodic, part slamming, part deep, part dark, but alllllll good. And technically Bone was out of this world. Contending with an unfortunate case of the skips on one deck, Bone still managed to mix flawlessly on three decks, as well as demonstrate some of his trademark doubling, cutting, EQing and effects unit skills which had jaws on the floor and people asking “who is this freak?”
Starting off with Carl Craig & Laurent Garnier’s classic Demented, the first hour of Bone’s set was heavy on the funk factor, featuring plenty of tight, funky, percussive grooves, including a remix of The Bass Has Got Me Movin’ by Love Tattoo. There were a few diversions into more melodic, deep, Detroit-inspired tunes as well, which sat nicely alongside the funkier selections.
By around 2 AM the beats were getting tougher, the dance floor was getting pummelled by shuffling feet, and my throat was getting sore from yelling so much, and it was only an hour into the set. Bone’s second hour was the period where he started picking up the intensity, slowly working his way from funkier sounds into some tough, loopy, percussive nonsense. Tracks like Birdland’s Jack My Edit, Shake It by Mark Williams and the now massive-despite-not-even-being-released-yet Things by Mark Broom kept the punters firmly on the dancefloor and provided the perfect straight grooves Bone needed to get busy on the mixer and show off his skills.
As 3 AM approached, Bone’s selections got heavier and heavier. Tracks by the likes of Hardcell, Samuel L Session and Mark Williams and even the classic Alarms by Jeff Mills had people absolutely losing their shit (I hate to use a clichéd phrase, but it really was like that), and had Bone grinning contently to himself as he kept working the floor like only he can. And in his final hour he embraced the true Detroit ethos and just mixed up good music. It didn’t matter if the tune was tribal, funky, deep, melodic, ravey, old, new, or any other adjective you can think of – if it was good, he would play it: a truly classy way to finish a truly classy set by a truly class act.
Sydney techno faithful: Mainline has returned. Get the hell on board.
