Club to Club

Two small necessary premises:

– the person writing this has not yet been blessed with the gift of ubiquity, so the festival you'll read about here is the festival as experienced by an attendee rather than a "journalist"; I'm not into completism, I prefer to focus on the things I like, even at the expense of thorough reporting;

– whoever's writing this has for years deeply loved going out dancing, having fun and enjoying whoever's playing, without considering technical mastery a priority but instead giving weight, together with everyone else, to personal taste and the overall success of the show.

Day 1: English Pastoral

Turin welcomes us with the same cold, rainy Mitteleuropean weather as last year's edition, a reminder that you often pick up right where you left off, but with renewed enthusiasm and a wish to look one step further ahead. This edition's line-up is juicy, full of new names and few old glories, staying true as ever to the festival's motto: "The Future Is Yet To Come".

For reasons too tedious to explain, I skip the opening event at the Teatro Carignano and, more generally, all of Thursday night, so my festival actually starts on Friday with 20 Years Of Axis on one side and Hyperdub Night on the other, having already ruled out Mano Le Tough and Meyer at Gamma as not nocturnal enough. Festivals are made of choices, and Friday night is a very dark one.

On the subject of choices, even though I loved the Actress album, I have to reckon with my inner techno purist and settle a score with Karl O'Connor. I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone play like that, never enjoyed myself so much, never felt human animality so viscerally. After granting a few extra minutes to opener Claude, part of the young Piedmontese DJ crew, who moved with real style through four shifts, from motorik funk to a techno brushwork of great finesse (though too often falling for the kick-in-kick-out trick), the Englishman takes over the controls: a quiet guy with an icy stare, one who opened the floodgates and spun 50 minutes of otherworldly music.

A techno that works on a single, gigantic level, one that goes beyond the very concept of tunnelling, with just two very brief pauses from above, two openings where the boss lifted everyone up towards the sky, emptying and softening the room before starting the merciless battle again.

Regis confirms himself as The Techno Thing, the apostle of a dark drama that fuses Robert Hood-style surgical precision, hardcore nihilism and a personality able to ferry it all onto a single plane.

Jeff Mills takes over the controls and immediately reaches for the hammer, right where O'Connor had left a groove behind, but the comparison is merciless, and the lady of Hyperdub is waiting for me.

I make it to the Hiroshima, where in the second room Disclosure are playing their last tracks, a rubbery, house-cut techno, proving they know how to command an euphoric, receptive crowd, sharpening their sound and showing themselves well suited to a festival audience. In the main room, the boss of bosses Kode9 spins grime, footwork, giant dub, 2step at full strength and a megaton of breaks, and it's like going to the circus, the light after Regis's night. I'll take two, thanks.

At five the floor starts to empty, and it closes out as if it were 1996 and jungle had never gone away.

Day 2: The Corrections

The great thing about accreditation passes and festivals is that, added together, they create huge logistical difficulty: the freedom to do whatever you want.

So it ends up that the afternoon is spent doing nothing, we stop by the Fondazione for Kate Wax, who honestly isn't worth it either, and let's hope she at least invited Holden over for dinner for that incredible remix, then we head to the bocciofila to eat cheese, lasagne, sausage cooked in wine, little pastries and moscato, and arrive at the Lingotto with the pride of the well-fed, while Sascha aka Apparat reminds you that you have to stay flexible.

The guy had accustomed us to softness and elegance, but behind the decks for the grand finale he's instead dishing out grainy techno that combines energy and spatiality. It ends in glory, with cheers for him and the whole main room chanting "put your hands in the air hop hop". Meanwhile, though, we're stuck in the coat-check line, the best spot from which to listen to a rather anonymous performance.

The disappointment of having missed Clark's set is offset by the comic anecdote that follows Nina Kraviz's live show, whose photos will soon be circulating. Something ridiculous, that has much more to do with trash or infamy than with music, confirming my age-old doubts about the producer's quality. Good.

On the subject of negative verdicts in the red room, there would have been John Talabot, but a soporific haze spreads through the whole Lingotto, inside and out, and it deserves my inattention. I do have to decide, though, whether to follow futurist SBTRKT or veteran Scuba. The choice is kindly made for me by the security guys who block smooth, free access to the second room, already too packed while waiting for the masked man. With my heart in pieces and a vodka tonic in hand, I trot off, weaving through the crowd towards the main room.

Paul Rose aka Scuba takes the controls, and two intrinsically related things happen:

1. the funk arrives

2. I turn into a total raver

Rose, having let go of his mystic dubstep reins for a while now, starts lining up an indecent amount of techno cuts, motorized funk, UK house, and basement stench. The main room sweats in a way that seemed unthinkable, with a quick response ready under the decks and blades flashing above; he moves like a top-tier flashy DJ: he barely touches the controls, plays far from the records, he's a big English lad doing whatever he pleases, until halfway through the set, when the cover image of the Mercy EP by Boddika & Orbison gets rear-projected inside everyone's brains.

The inevitable happens. Mercy is an indecent floorfiller, it sounds massive, Scuba lets it build, saws it up, throws it out, it's pure techno joy. After that I'm not quite sure what happened, I slipped into the mysticism of an old clubber who by now barely drinks either; back in the red room they were talking about something really special, but by then I was captivated, lost, gone — a muscular, physical DJ set without ever being vulgar, festival-ready without ever selling out, put together with intelligence and style.

I step out of the bubble and try to convince myself that yes, I can survive Dettmann, I can keep having fun. Scuba leaves the booth with the crowd in seventh heaven, while the traveling salesman of O-ton kicks off his own DJ set. In the red room, Rustie is doing stuff I'm not able to enjoy, so I decide to stay in the middle of the four-to-the-floor chaos to see if Dettmann is what he's supposed to be: a boss.

Dettmann, I've convinced myself, is on a huge trip of his own, that of becoming the new Jeff Mills. Things that clash with this fixation of his:

– Jeff Mills is still active and, despite everything, still nails it. And let's be honest, we can criticize him all we like, but when he drops it, everybody moves;

– he's not from Detroit, he's Austrian, raised on bread and Berghain;

– he's not African-American but Caucasian European, and he plays alongside Nina Kraviz, who sits on stage next to him smoking cigarettes.

Dettmann is inexplicable, he's not on any trip I can grasp, he doesn't play dynamically, he has no good basslines, he's a Mitteleuropean hammer who understands nothing and is really getting on my nerves.

I wander around, grab a drink, peek into the red room while the youth I no longer am drop massive, majestic bass with Rustie's closing set, followed by Ital, who'd deserve a stage all to himself, playing at full volume with a variety of colors and a precision that would put the greats to shame, violent and unhinged, closing the set by brushing through deephouse as if it were still '97. Applause, hearts, two of the best live sets of the festival.

At 4.30am, doubt viciously grips your correspondent's mind: Shackleton vs Holden. Alas, I've never seen Shack live; the red room is a sauna, James reminds me of the greatest nights ever, and the air on the main floor is electric. I start with the deathdub man, and it's instant nightmare. Hell claims what's left of the crowd, probing everyone's inner disturbances, and the first half hour is masterful, unleashing steel drum caves, reverbs giving birth to percussion, volcanic basslines.

However, I have a huge problem: the distracting, disturbing presence of people chattering, people with headphones on chattering, gaunt men with beards and long hair and headphones chattering, stunning chicks constantly shifting from one spot to another who I imagine are chattering too, a crowd that's basically a bunch of jerks. Chattering away and standing there as if they were at a bar. I get tired, I'm not young anymore, I'm a grumpy clubber who can't be patient any longer, so I go over to James.

James Holden in front of a few thousand people is and always remains a kid with a big trip going on in his head. He moves, dances, laughs and jokes with everyone below him, no posturing on stage. Holden seems to give zero thought to "those who know better," like the top of the class who annoys the dull Dettmanns of the world, while he climbs on stage with a joy for being there and doing what he loves that's hugely contagious.

And then Holden plays the way Holden plays: it's a cruise where you set off without arriving at any precise destination, where the idea is the journey itself and the images flowing alongside it — you have to take it all in and let yourself be won over by the world. The set glides by, with simpler solutions than his usual standards, with a worn-out, high, blissed-out crowd that — as a physical principle now taught in elementary school — lets out roars the moment the guy with the mop of hair behind the decks pulls out and drops the bass back in. It ends with a space-disco-Moroder-whatever journey, ending a stunning day, ending with James tired and smiling, happy, everyone happy.

The future is yet to come.

Day 3: Turin|Analog

The impact of the third day of the festival is calm and finally rain-free, with a few mouthfuls of sun for breakfast, and at an easy pace we head towards San Salvario, where at the Astoria the live set by duo Raime will see very little light and a whole lot of terror. Undoubtedly worn out by the previous two days and by a time slot not exactly merciful for processing such a sonic assault, I put myself through one of the most stressful and powerful physical exercises of recent years. I've rarely found it so exhausting to withstand a live set: the two of them move between suspicious drones, slow-motion locomotives and supersonic cuts, swaying in near-total darkness, and the Astoria's basement becomes a place of rare terror. Beautiful, unexpected, top quality. But... forgive me if after half an hour I step away from the set — my ears and my head were starting to suffer well past the threshold — I take back in the city lights with a strong sense of mental disturbance, and realign my perception with a falafel from Horas, who calls me a southerner, along with my travel companions.

We approach the true closing of the festival at the beautiful Teatro della Concordia in Venaria; the air is that of a major event, and all of us — no one excluded — are there waiting for the first and only Italian live show by Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus. The early-evening time slot allows for relaxed expressions, greetings among the survivors and chatter to put this Club To Club experience in order, which so far has once again proven itself to be one of the richest and best-organized festivals in the world. Everyone very happy with the days gone by, each with their own favorites, we let Martyn help us digest it all.

Martyn is the kind of teacher who leaves a mark on you as well as teaching you something; he's not the type who will ever release the absolute masterpiece, the milestone for posterity, but he's a DJ-producer born and raised in an era that's undoubtedly the wrong one, too tight or too broad, where the boundless horizon of the internet is a madness in which one gets lost. He's someone who knows with great precision what he loves and what he's capable of; he proves to be a master of rhythm able to bring together Detroit techno, UK house and drum'n'bass closers, ranging gracefully, giving breathing room to a sound that's incredibly distinctive through the use of drum kits always dosed perfectly in the midrange, so much so that they never seem to drop, that make you lose your accent — he's someone who knows just how necessary funk is to move the floor, and who, with rare grace, carries you through an hour of beauty.

There's no shortage of colourful moments at a festival that knows how to deliver surprises, and in the middle of Martyn's set, a big, broad-shouldered black guy with the smile of someone having the time of his life turns up right next to me. FlyLo treats himself to half an hour of dancing in the middle of the crowd, soaking up the warmth, the pats on the back, the bows and the sheer joy of people getting to see and touch the sharpest hip-hop producer of recent years. Someone who, without too much hesitation, is establishing himself as the worthy heir to J Dilla.

That's exactly the point — a quick digression here. Going to concerts, dancing, enjoying a show is and should always be a great joy, something that enriches and leaves behind a general positivity, and, as a tiny musician/DJ myself, I believe this happiness starts above all from whoever's on stage. Whether it's C2C or the step of some dive bar out in the suburbs makes no difference anymore, if something beyond the music itself is being given. Why?

Because Flying Lotus live is happiness, it's sharing the energy and joy the guy experiences being able to play his own music, because it's a show of colors and a rainbow of visions thanks to his two visual-projection sidekicks, because you get completely absorbed into the varied, chaotic world of someone who's clearly on a mission. FlyLo live is an hour of smiles and wonder, it's hip-hop in its most unruly and non-violent form, it's the true revolution of every sound heard up to that point, amid grime workouts, techno, old school, Erykah Badu and a huge tribute to the Beastie Boys with a drop of Intergalactic that seemed to have fallen straight out of 2112.

And it really makes you think that no motto could ever be more fitting for a festival: "the future is yet to come." The future is yet to come, but it has already arrived with the guy from Los Angeles. Without much doubt, the most spectacular and engaging live show of the entire festival, something that leaves a mark on the life of anyone who experienced it.

C2C #12 comes to an end, ending with FlyLo acclaimed and grandmaster DJ Kode9 rattling bones in the closing set, in the big celebration of those who stay till the end. As for me, after a small emotional crisis, I decide the joy is too much and Turin too bright outside Venaria's fog, on the first rain-free evening, right as it all comes to an end. Everything beautiful. I have to thank Elena from C2C, who put up with my demands as a difficult reporter throughout all three days and who quickly and kindly sorted out a few mishaps.

A huge thank you, a giant hug and a wet kiss to my little brother Alberto Asquini, who once again this year sent me on a trip to the best festival there is, in the city that has adopted me over the past 12 months.

To Tania, Maria and Francesca.