Just one day after he celebrated his 38. birthday (on November 26th), Boris Brejcha played a top class set in one of the Amsterdam’s famous clubs – Shelter.
In an almost intimate atmosphere created by circa 700 visitors he rocked a 2 hours set, similar to the one played at Grand Palais Paris for Cercle this summer.
After so many big festivals and huge productions played, it was quite a (birthday) surprise to see Brejcha in such a small venue. The club is located completely underground and thus resembles an old bomb shelter. From the outside it can only be recognized by cartoon-like doors sticking out diagonally from the concrete floor at the bottom of A’DAM Tower.
That being said, one does not enter this club, one descends to it, to the atmosphere similar to the one that Alice might have experienced in the great story by Lewis Caroll. The dark and cold interior of the club is interrupted by a couple of palm trees (!) placed on the dance floor and smashed by incredibly powerful sound. The Timeout described it accurately as "So much Hertz, it hurts".
The evening was cracked open by Marc Hostage, freshly baked producer based in Amsterdam with releases published by Weiter and Stil for Talent. Considering his not so extensive experience in the industry, Marc succeeded in warming up the sold out club with his 3-hours long melodic tech house set.
At 2:00 AM sharp, Brejcha walked into the stage. Yes, into, and not onto, as the DJ booth is placed on the ground level together with the audience – take a look at the atmosphere in the gallery. The pioneer of high-tech minimal, master of power naps and owner of an ever expanding rubber ducks collection opened his set with “Redemption” while the duckies were happily spinning next to him.
As we found out later, a part of this rubber flock remained in Belgrade the next day where Brejcha played on Topljenje festival, together with his whole label family. Despite the following big day, Brejcha extended his Shelter set for another half an hour and squeezed in many of his hot hits such as "I Take it Smart", "Angel in the Sky", "Gravity" and "Never Look Back" which sat well with the audience just as the recently published "Happinezz" or yet unpublished "Exit".
As he recently commented for djmag.com, Brejcha tests all of his finished tracks in the privacy of his own studio, by dancing to himself, just like Billy Idol, and all that in order to ensure the groove capable of moving even the laziest of feet. Probably the hottest moment of the evening happened during his performance of “Shake it down”.
The insanity of this moment, the audience and Brejcha himself is caught on some videos on YouTube for you to see. He traditionally closed the set with “Purple Noise” and with it he zipped up the evening packed with dancing, the sound, the beat, the hits and the emotion, all compressed within this little underground cube.
The evening continued led by the Canadian Niki Sadeki. Based in Vancouver, she made her way into the scene with her popular online mixes and the podcast “Allure”. Her atmospheric performance packed with melody provided a good time for the last ones standing until early morning hours.
Brejcha’s show at the Shelter was one of his last shows this year as he is preparing for the well deserved vacation. In 2019 he climbed again on most of the most important electronic mainstages, such as Tomorrowland and Awakenings. Most of his show were completely sold out well in advance, he completed his US tour (and made two documentary about the life on tour, released 4 singles for ULTRA Music, as well as fourth “family” compilation FCKNG SERIOUS – Four Years…
And did an interview with Clubbing Croatia to which he also wished all the best for the 18th birthday. And that’s not all, folks! This Friday keep an eye on him, as the new single “Lieblingsmensch” arrives, soon to be followed by a new album, scheduled for January 2020.
Author: Zita Pronj
