NEWS
EVENTS
Happiness was Happening: Gerd Janson, Roman Flügel and Kassem Mosse at Oval Space
House | Monday 1st December 2014 | edhowe
Just 100 metres or so away from an industrial gas tower blurred in the fog, crowds gathered from the cold to fill out Oval Space's warehouse loft for the fourth and final chapter of the Oval Space Music in-house series. Already hosting the likes of Robert Hood, Âme, Dennis Ferrer, Rick Wade and Kollektiv Turmstrasse, the concluding chapter of 2014 was always set to be something special.
First up from the all-German line up was Gerd Janson. Very much taking the approach of easing-in rather than confronting, tracks such as Farben’s lagging ‘Live at the Sahara Tahoe, 1973’ and Vidis’s upbeat romantic rework of ‘Elise’ by The Blondes patiently crafted a slow burning introduction for the arriving crowds. Janson gradually increased the intensity with Joy Orbison’s moody rework of Jungle’s ‘The Heat’ to a great reception as the main room started filling out. Much of the set focused on slowed-down and groove-heavy analogue house and disco and was particularly effective on Oval Space’s outstanding bottom heavy sound system. By the time the deep house duo Benoit and Sergio’s thumping ‘Your Darkness’ rolled in with Kresy’s ‘Mystic Strings’, Oval Space was fully immersed at nearly full capacity. With well-deserved praise at the end of Janson’s set, Flügel was ready to take centre stage.
Having built up a chameleon-like identity within the techno scene over his two-decade career, Roman Flügel’s set certainly lived up to expectations. Within a few minutes, the audience was greeted with the hypnotic arpeggios and trance influenced pads of Simian Mobile Disco’s ‘Supermoon’. The euphoria swiftly moved into darker territories with the harsh bleeps and off-beat dissonant keys of LoSoul’s ‘BZA’. The mixing of harsh mechanic drum-machine techno into Kowton’s nostalgic and oddly soulful ‘Glock and Roll’ evoked a brief moment of melancholy. As the night progressed Flügel looked to TB303 acid house to build momentum. The devastating riff of Talamanca System’s ‘Balanzat (Acid Reflux)’ tore through the main room and built the set towards its climax, the Chicago mix of Todd Osborn’s ‘Put Your Weight On It’. While Kassem Mosse set up for his live performance, Flügel ended his two-hour eclectic set with the paranoid, strained vocals of Pional on John Talabot’s refix of ‘It’s All Over’. The resulting effect was brilliantly haunting in such a large space, and after letting the dystopian track fade to silence, all eyes turned to Mosse.
Mosse explained recently in an interview with bassmusicblog.com that the differences between his live and DJ sets are “when I play live I try to create a set that gives me enough freedom to shape the tracks as I go and a situation where I can also lose control, where I can get lost.” That is exactly how he approached the set; sculpting and modulating drum sounds, bleeps and bass lines on the fly resulting in an intense and spacious minimal techno set full of excitement and spontaneity. Particularly impressive was how the opening intermittent sounds gradually formed into a sparse techno track with such fluidity that you barely noticed.
With a stunning closing set from Oval Space Music’s celebrated resident DJ and producer Fritz Zander, this marked the end of a series showcasing some of the finest exponents from the underground electronic music scene. With the next Oval Space Music night hosting techo artists Rødhåd, Radio Slave and Fjaak Live in February 2015, the success of Saturday night has set the bar very high.
Find our more about:
Oval Space Music on Facebook, Twitter and their website,
Roman Flügel on Facebook, Twitter, his website and SoundCloud,
Kassem Mosse on Facebook and the site for his Workshop project,
Gerd Janson on Facebook and as a staff member for the Red Bull Music Academy and
Fritz Zander on Facebook, SoundCloud and Twitter.
