- It's Saturday afternoon and it's baking hot. We're on a concrete terrace deep among the dead streets and warehouses of Hackney Wick. There's sunshine, sunglasses, picnic tables, a makeshift bar, a DJ under a cabana and even an ice cream van serving up softees.
For the past four years, Spilt Milk have thrown some of the hottest summer parties in London, booking tech house heavyweights like Radio Slave, Guido Schneider and, this time, Tiefschwarz. The flyers had warned of "limited capacity" and they weren't joking. The terrace of iCAN Studios is small, and from 4PM onwards it filled up fast. Tred Benedict and St. Bernard took turns warming up with minimal tech loops that sounded enormous in the silence of industrial East London. Mark Ashken carried on with a more progressive, hypnotic set which, though tough and technically impressive, felt somewhat reserved, never finding that next gear (though maybe deliberately so, as he was setting the stage for Tiefschwarz).
The hundreds on the terrace condensed and amassed around the DJ cabana as Basti Schwarz took to the decks. With a wide grin, he turned the heat up from simmering to boiling and laid down big, bouncy basslines that sounded louder, harder and punchier than anything we'd heard all day. The party was finally here. Basti pushed the fun, percussive side of Tiefschwarz's sound with building, insatiable rhythms and snatches of vocal samples. While still tough and resolute, every track was catchy and encouraged many hands-in-the-air moments. As the sun set over the warehouses on the horizon, Basti increased the momentum, peaking with tracks like Nathan Fake's "The Sky Was Pink (Holden Remix)." The set grew ever more eclectic, almost as if he was flicking through favourites from his iPod. As a final gimmick, caged light boxes lit up on either side of the cabana. With that, Basti took us late into the night, well past his allotted 10 PM set finish, as if he was enjoying it too much to leave.