- There's always more than one reason to go to Fabric. Tonight they gave us six. Which poses awkward questions of when, where and who to hear. As well as the maze-like set-up of Fabric's cold-storage/sweat-box architecture, there's the added complexity of a crowd that seems to be constantly on the move, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing like some perpetual, excitable tide. But, with a line-up like this, that's no surprise. The place encourages movement, demands it in fact: It's a necessary part of creating a perfect musical balance. With Ben Klock working room two to a de(con)structive peak, and Carl Craig dealing with room one's superlative acoustic dynamics, it's hard to stay in one place.
This reviewer started things off with a visit to see Klock play after his back-to-back with Steffi. Following his Mauer Fall set at the Goethe Institute back in November, Klock built on the latent energy from London's last encounter with the Berghain resident and released it into the Martin Audio sound system. If it's possible, Klock exceeded his performance at the intimate Goethe night, playing to a crowd that enthusiastically engaged with his uncompromising Teutonic techno. Room two's sound holds such a power that, at its peak, the energy output must match that of a small power-station, and such is the clarity and roundness of the sound that your ears don't fatigue. Klock supremely manipulated this set-up, finding the right frequency responses from the system and never dropping the energy, just choice cuts of the finest contemporary techno.
Over in room one, having largely spent the hours dancing to Deutschland, a Detroit-led takeover was in place. Catching only snippets of Carl Craig's set, which went down a storm and made maximum use of the more musically diverse expectations of the main-room crowd, Jamie Jones eventually took over and mixed expertly tailored and crafted house music with a track selection, perfect for this time and this place, that kept the cavernous space well heated until the early, early hours.