- Even before the unusually early 10 PM start time, the Berghain queue was more than twenty people deep. To celebrate the release of the fifth instalment of their Superlongevity series, Perlon had invited some of their friends to play at a marathon party consisting of both live and DJ sets, and the remarkably strong lineup had clearly caught people's attention.
By 10:15 PM, A Guy Called Gerald was already expertly weaving a moody, dubby soundscape within the cavernous walls of the main room, and although the enthusiastic crowd could do little more than stand and watch from the sidelines, the gradual evolution into more rhythmic techno seemed organic and unforced. Three hours later, the set's climax of stripped-back percussive loops and stark melodic stabs built a level of tension and excitement that Shackleton, playing next, never quite managed to achieve. Opting for out-and-out weirdness over any solid rhythmical structure, somehow Shackleton's set didn't quite manage to capture the imagination of the crowd.
San Proper followed with a set that brought things back to more familiar territory, and although arguably less interesting than Shackleton's performance, it somehow seemed to work better. With Berghain busier than I've ever seen it before, San Proper's gradual development to a more groove-driven set certainly went down well with the crowd, and tempted the final remaining wall-dwellers toward the centre of the room. Closing downstairs was Portable, who intertwined classic rhythmic and melodic techno elements with a live vocal performance via a frankly dazzling vocoder setup. What could have been cheesy or throwaway grew into one of my favourite sets of the night, with the vocal elements genuinely adding a heartfelt human element to contrast the pounding electronic sounds behind it.
At some point towards the end of the live sets, the adjoining door to Panoramabar crept open. As Portable drew to a close, a frantic exodus upstairs to continue partying began, and Perlon label owner Zip opened proceedings with two of the finest hours of house music I've heard in a long time. Darting effortlessly between the vastly different elements of the Perlon arsenal, Zip's set was a frankly exemplary exhibition of how the very best minimal is light years away from the repetitive clicks and vocal glitches that have come to give the genre a bad name.
Sammy Dee followed with a similarly varied offering, carving a path that also encompassed more classic house sounds. The final set of the event—from Audio Werner—started strong, but around the time I finally admitted defeat and headed home the signs of a day-long party were starting to appear in the mixing, as occasional minor mistakes gradually became frequent, considerable ones.
The decision to have only Berghain open for the live sets, then only Panorama Bar open for the DJ sets was certainly an interesting one. On the upside, everyone got to see everything—there have been countless times when I've struggled to choose between the act in Berghain and the one in Panorama Bar. On the downside, during the lulls in Berghain, there was no option but to go and hang out by the bar. There was also the slightly awkward transition between the two spaces, with a sizeable queue forming on the stairs as people waited patiently to squeeze into any available square centimetre of space upstairs. But these really are minor gripes in what was an otherwise exceptional night—and one in which the Perlon family proved that their label really did have something special to celebrate.