- The former slaughterhouse hosts a night of cutting-edge electronics.
- In recent years, Macao, a former slaughterhouse in Milan, has turned into the city's epicenter for alternative and unconventional arts, from electronic music to carpentry. There's an energy soaked in its walls, generated by the thousands of people who have visited and the many resident artists devoted to keeping the place alive. Last Saturday, three of Milan's most interesting collectives—Rete Neurale Milano E.S.T, Hencote / Henkot and Haunter Records—teamed up for a 12-hour event featuring Aleksi Perälä, Delta Funktionen, Djrum, Volruptus, Lokier and Ruben Patiño.
A fresh breeze blew through Macao when I arrived around sunset. The experimental Italian label OOH-sounds had taken over the garden until midnight. The crowd was eating pizza or fruit (distributed for free) while listening to the crackly and dreamy textures of the label boss, Backwords, followed by VORONOI's post-humanist tonalities. The main hall was set up to chill: you could sit on a bench and get lost looking at the glass ceiling and disco balls, flooded by red lights. It didn't take long before the place was swarming with a diverse crowd, twirling among Macao's different spaces. Marco Segato, cofounder of Rete Neurale Milano E.S.T, opened the Temple with a live hardware set of spectral electro breaks and gloomy vocals, as people howled enthusiastically. The party had officially started. During the set, two Georgian guys shouted at me, "We go to Bassiani every weekend but this place is the real shit!"
These longer events at Macao allow the organizers, artists and crowd to fully open themselves and let go, and this event was nicely balanced in all its aspects. Each room was set up to create a particular mood according to who was playing. There were soft pink neons in the chill-out room during Haunter Records' showcase; neurotic flashing lights in the Temple, which hosted Inner Lakes (the cofounder of Rete Neurale), Volruptus and Delta Funktionen; and the dreamy magic of Macao's huge tree, located right behind the DJ booth and covered by golden blankets in the garden, which is where Random Aitch and Lokier played. Dawn broke around 5 AM, as Aleksi Perälä's clear-yet-alien Colundi sounds blended into Djrum's exceptional closing set. It was a mixture of his own productions, such as the wonderful "Tension," plus jungle breaks and dubbed-out gabber-style cuts. It was a midsummer night dream I didn't want to wake up from.
Photo credit /
Sara Bianca Scanderberech