BC103 - DVS1, Minneapolis (November 30, 2024)
One for the ages
DVS1; photo by Paul Krause
One reason this missive is delinquent is that I avoided writing about it for a while. Some of that was caution, some exhaustion—it’s been a busy season of writing and of my day job, and I am not getting younger. But nothing I’ve experienced this year made a positive dent in me like this one.
This was DVS1’s fiftieth birthday party. I’m being vague about it on purpose; the event was ticketed at RA, but at a secret link, now gone. (My apologies to the door people; I have fixed the app for good.) Just him, 11:30 to 6 a.m. Only 400 spots. The place holds that many fairly comfortably, but it was still packed. It was also the most unified feeling I’ve experienced in a room, on a dance floor, in a freaking age.
The pre-party helped—at a friend’s, lots of folks, I plugged my stick in for a few songs (I sucked, but not too badly), and got a T-shirt for my trouble. I felt communal. I was ready. We departed close to midnight—it was a five-minute drive away—and got there as the ambience was glimmering. Our caravan was early enough to make it in before most of the crowd got there—it was a Saturday night, people pre-gamed elsewhere—and then I went off to speaker right, sometimes moving back middle center, sometimes working my way in, often just going around the right. I did a lot of walking, but that’s not what I remember.
What I remember is how little I remember—and how glorious that feeling was and remains. I was rolling, yes—the room was (even if not everyone in the room was). The dynamics were unassailable; it felt like he was piloting us more than performing for us. Everybody was there for it, in every sense: We knew how special this was going to be, and in a way we helped will it into being by our readiness to go where he wanted to take us. The sonic tricks he’d pull out—something that seemed to come out of the middle of the air, or something that seemed to dig the ground out below even as the floor got sturdier and slipperier—were sparing and beautifully timed. I nearly reached nirvana when the first drop of condensation hit my forehead.
On this night, I had a good time seeing people I don’t normally have a good time seeing. I re-met an old friend with whom I have since gotten to hang out; there was a lot of re-connection or new connection there, it seemed. It isn’t what you get every time you go out for techno; it’s not always what you want. But everyone there seemed to need it, the DJ included. Nothing else I’ve experienced this year comes close to it.
There were other kinds of exhaustion, too—the ambient kind that has followed the election, for one—and that has led to the lull as well. Basically, the sets I was going to write up seemed frivolous, somehow—part of a reality that now seemed to have a wall in front of it. My intention is to do a speed-round of those in the near future. Otherwise, I am sorry not to have kept up. I am considering a change of format, honestly—something broader, perhaps, or at least an alternate series within. Stay tuned.