Music : House and Techno
Tickets: faction-sheffield.com (SUPER EARLY BIRD SOLD OUT)
Cargo, Collect! and drumro[ll] bring you:
Deetron (Music Man)
Slam (Soma)
Move D (Workshop)
Mike Dehnert (Fachwerk)
Tom Trago (Rush Hour)
Redshape (Delsin)
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Three is, of course, the magic number. De la Soul, founding members of the Magic Table alongside Paul Daniels and Victorian street urchin David Copperfield, taught us that. And so to celebrate the power of three, on the 3rd of June, the 3rd Bank Holiday of the year, the three biggest nights in Sheffield come together.
Expect fireworks. Expect excitement. Expect more than a little bit of spine-shivering wonder. But most of all, expect the finest house and techno the world has to offer as drumro[ll], Cargo and Collect! collide in a supernova of raw dancing. I’d start stretching up now, it’s going to be a biggy.
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Deetron
Think of the Swiss, and you’re probably left with a blank. A penchant for clocks with cuckoos, chocolate with points and gold with a less than appealing pedigree are perhaps their most apparent characteristics, but look beneath these tourist magnets and you’ll discover a world of Detroit-indebted techno and genre-straddling DJs.
Well, DJ. Although the list of Swiss wheel-steelers may be long, one name stands atop like a Colossus. Deetron’s pedigree is undoubted and a listen through his recent Balance mix is testament to that; a seamless double-disc, half mixed digitally and half solely on vinyl, that shows that when you’ve got the chops the medium means nothing. Deetron is a true star, a man who made his name the traditional way – by being one of the very best at what he does.
Slam
If you don’t know Slam, then you don’t know techno. End of, and I’ll hear no discussion. Whether through Soma, the seminal label that since 1991 has released some of the most important techno records ever put to wax (including a little record by the name of Homework), or under their own moniker, Slam have been furthering the sound of the music that makes you dance in the dark until you can’t dance no more.
These are the Glasgow dons, the original Arches duo, the inimitable, vital and ever-present techno warriors. And they’re coming to show you how it’s done.
Move D
Electronic music has never been about playing things safe. The loop-driven, alien noises that burst from Detroit’s underbelly more than two decades ago have given birth to a scene that never sits still, that at its best sounds terrifyingly new and almost incomprehensible to the majority.
This is the world of Move D, a man to whom boundaries are as immaterial as Dorset fog. With a discograpy that plots the progression of dance music, and a bank of associations and aliases that would make grown men weep, Move D is the original innovator, a dance music pioneer and a true one a kind. He makes music that your mother does not understand, and that’s never a bad thing.
Mike Dehnert
Fachwerk is one of the best labels in the world. Over the last four years it’s been one of the most important outlets for the driven, subsonic, all-night techno that rattles through the speakers of Berghain every weekend. As that label’s owner and biggest contributing artist, Mike Dehnert is one of the most important electronic artists in the world. He’s also a cracking DJ, and if you don’t know that, then you don’t know enough.
Tom Trago
Some records sound like they’ve existed forever. Almost as though infused with an ever-present essence, they were not so much created as hewn from the living rock, discovered deep underground after being subjected to the pressure and heat that creates a musical diamond.
Such is the sound of Tom Trago, the Rush Hour mainstay who in his short life has been remixed by Carl Craig, collaborated with Romanthony and mixed his way across the world with a style and panache that cannot be bettered. Like a musical hermaphrodite, Tom Trago combines things that should never be put together. Unlike a hermaphrodite, he makes that shit work.
Redshape
He wears a mask. He plays techno. Anything else you need to know?
Well, his records have been released by Delsin, 3024 and Brainfeeder. He makes regular appearances at Berghain, Fabric and any warehouse party you care to mention. Oh, he’s released some of the most vital records in techno over the last few years. He’s mentioned in the same breath as Kassem Mosse, Objekt and Space Dimension Controller…
Does any of this matter? Of course not. All you need to know is that he’s stunning, and he’s coming here to blow you apart.
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Of course, all these DJs don’t make a party on their own. They need sound, so we’ve got the best rigs in the city, provided by the musical maverick Danger Noise.
They need a place to play, so we’ve got the best venue in the city, opened up fully for the first time in a maze of rooms, tunnels and stairways that we’re filling with all kinds of madness that stretches far beyond musical pleasures. Expect to get lost, and expect not to care.
But of course parties don’t start at midnight. Not on bank holidays, oh no. They start as soon as you wake up and enjoy that refreshing Pimms and gin-soaked bowl of Corn Flakes. So to cater for you decadent so-and-so’s, we’ll be throwing a sun-drenched* daytime shenanigan, full of the finest house music known to man. Just keep your eyes peeled for details over the coming weeks.
Advance tickets for this somewhat sizeable shenanigan are just £20 +bf, available from www.faction-sheffield.com and Resident Advisor, or without fees from Cow, Bungalows & Bears, Golden Harvest or our network of ticket sellers (keep your eyes here for details). For those who are quick on the draw, super-earlybirds are just £15, and earlybirds are £18 exclusively from www.faction-sheffield.com. Be quick though, because there aren’t many and they’ll be ‘flying’ out the door (pun very much intended).
Well, I guess we’ll see you there then…