SXSW Music Review: Roi Perez, Monoloc

If you tried to see Roi Perez in Berlin, where he holds a residency at Panorama Bar, you couldn’t get in. Even regulars at the Berlin “world capital of techno” are turned away nightly. Panorama is infamous for that door “policy,” but SXSWers were ID’d and stamped with a hospitable Southern smile on Thursday night at Barcelona.

Roi Perez (Photo by John Anderson)

Inside, Perez coaxed a nervous, loitering crowd of about 50 people into ecstatic dance in less than 20 minutes. It takes lesser DJs eons longer to build that kind of momentum from bodies at rest, but the Israeli record buyer for London’s Phonica Records shop laid down instrumental machine funk, house, techno, and electro seamlessly and effectively for 90 minutes.

“Techno sounds so romantic,” swooned one attendee.

The venue, known lovingly to Austinites as “the bass cave,” has powered speakers as big as a compact car sitting in a space only a few parking spots wide. Simple division suggests a lot of boom per square foot, which Germany’s Sascha Borchardt worked with his own productions and a DJ set as Monoloc. Borchardt’s set of characteristically masculine, slamming techno broke with the rumbling, thunderous jolts of nocturnal roars played by CDJs.

The small crowd of dancers thinned, but the remainder were dedicated to the thick, portentous loops and alleys of Borchardt’s two-hour techno mix.