- When I arrived at OHM on Saturday night, the line for Tresor's small, arty sister club stretched hundreds of feet long, far eclipsing the queue outside the hulking former power plant next door. The party and cassette mix series Altered Soul Experiment had landed an outsized headliner for the evening, Hunee, a dedicated selector who now leads thousands-strong festival crowds in disco singalongs.
It's easy to see why ASE has managed to host intimate events with Hunee, Antal and Sassy J since they started promoting last year. The label compiles cassettes that feel like personalized mixtapes from some of the most knowledgeable DJs around, Marcellus Pittman, Red Greg and Alexander Nut among them. For successful DJs who cut their teeth playing disco nights at small bars or behind the counters at dusty record stores, playing ASE could feel like a return to their roots.
Party founders Amila and Sanctuary warmed up as OHM filled to the rafters. Cuts of non-quantized synth funk, like Circle City Band's "Magic," went down nicely while punters staked out standing room on the benches lining the walls. At around 2:30 AM, they teed up Hunee with Klassique's "Somebody's Loving You," a boogie jewel with a massive breakdown. (The track also appeared on Pittman's ASE tape.)
After his traditional Pointer Sisters intro, Hunee settled in for the long shift, patiently working through zouk and other Caribbean oddities in hour one, before hitting a musically supple disco-to-fusion groove in hour two and finally sliding into some drum machine cuts deep in hour three. The floor was heaving and the bar, usually a decent place to chill out and talk with friends, was surrounded on all sides by flailing dancers. That said, the door staff did an admirable job of preventing the club from overcrowding—somehow you could always inch your way towards the front without too much trouble.
Hunee's been playing every weekend for the past three years, and it shows. There was a natural, almost imperceptible rise in tempo as the night wore on. Nearly every track was a perfect tonal match for its predecessor. He took a free-flowing, melodic approach to mixing, blending around a guitar vamp here, mashing two hand drum breaks together there. As the kick drums started to bang, he followed Joe's madcap "Tail Lift" with an equally unhinged Lipelis edit. About an hour later, he was tipping his hat to some East Coast greats, dropping Joe Claussell and Romanthony.
The lessons Hunee learned during his Hunching All Night! years at Berlin's Soju Bar in the early 2010s are never far from hand. Now a superstar, he still follows in the footsteps of Larry Levan, preaching a message of love through the lyrics of his songs. As his seven-hour set drew to a close, he dropped Levan's edit of Inner City's "Make It Last Forever," before sending them off with Gloria Jay's "Know What You Want." On the fence about a life in dance music just a few years ago, Hunee's now resolute, and his sets, at their best, are a perfect give and take between DJ and dancer. Jay's lyrics did a nice job of summing up his current position: "Oh, think about your future and lay it all on the line and know what you what, know what you want in your life."