#globalunderground

BY DOM PHILLIPS

DON’T go out for dinner tonight in London town. Not unless you fancy kebab. Danny Tenaglia is in town and every head chef in town is at home in Leicester Square, dancing alongside a scrum of clubbers, scenesters, dance industry folk, producers and DJs. Tough shit for big-spending couples splashing out on that special meal; good news for fans of masterful house mixing. Upstairs in the VIP Room it’s celebrity central as Tom from the Chemical Brothers rubs shoulders with Bobak, ex of Another Level while Lisa I’Anson leans coolly against a wall. On the main floor Global Underground’s James ‘Chairman’ Todd is strangely quiet - bar the odd war-whoop - while partner Andy Horsfield is nodding and smiling and cheerfully silent. It’s the witching hour, Danny Tenaglia is playing it deep, dark and groovy and everyone chefs, DJs, heads-down flailing dancers - is lost in music, caught in a trap, no turning back. This DJ is so good he’s even shut the Boxed boys up.

Tenaglia plays gourmet house. He doesn’t use rapid-fire snare rolls and he doesn’t drop quick-fix dancefloor explosions. He teases out swaying grooves that slow-burn rather than flame up, but still bristle with energy; he shadow-boxes with specially-recorded vocals and effects. Be warned: unlike his last set from Athens, this mix sees Tenaglia exorcising even more of his soul and garage influences alongside percussion-based techno and deep, dark house. It is Global Underground’s deepest mix to date - so listen loud with an open mind.

During his London visit Tenaglia makes his presence felt over two sets at Home and a wild afterhours party at AKA, where Laurent Gamier plays in the next room. Much as he loves Home, Tenaglia’s not happy about the DJ booth’s prominent position in the middle of the floor - so the club later relocate it to the back of the room. “He doesn’t want to be the centre of attention,” explains his manager Kevin. “He doesn’t like all the hero worship. He finds it distracting.” But with other big-name American DJs increasingly out of the loop, Danny Tenaglia can’t avoid the spotlight. Paul Oakenfold names him his world favourite. At Miami’s Winter Music dance conference, his annual ten hour sets have become a ritual. In the early 90s his productions with Peter Daou for Tribal Records helped define a period in house music history - alongside artists he fostered like Murk and Deep Dish. Now he occupies a unique position in international dance music - as respected by garage-loving New Yorkers as he is by British clubbers fired up by progressive and trance, with a sound that checks the best elements of both into a sleazy love hotel for the evening. Now that home in London and Space in Ibiza have him playing regularly, Tenaglia is more influential than ever.

So when he decided to base his second Global Underground mix on a DJing trip to London, everyone came out to play. And not even the chefs were planning on eating.

THURSDAY is John Digweed’s birthday and come early evening he’s hopping round the empty Heaven club with a nervous grin on his face. Deep Dish are headlining his monthly Bedrock night, but flyers have hinted at a “very special guest”. Two days ago Bedrock announced Tenaglia was playing in an e-mail to members and the word’s gone round like wildfire. “This is the icing on the cake, one of the best DJs in the world,” grins Digweed. “You never see me on the dancefloor, but I was there for five hours in Miami. Every record he plays is amazing. He’s got that dark, twisted dirtiness to his sound but it’s got real energy. It’s got a real groove to it. It keeps you locked in.”

Danny Tenaglia sneaks in with two huge shopping bags, winks at me, glances at John. He surveys the empty dancefloor. “I have the most vivid memories of this room from when I visited London as a tourist in 1988,”he confides. “I wasn’t here to DJ. I came here with three friends and we came to Heaven every night. That’s where I was musically touched. I was overwhelmed by the freak show.” The Freak Show in question was Paul Oakenfold ’s famous Spectrum night, one of the first Smiley clubs: the young Tenaglia had just stumbled into acid house, right at its very birth. The city’s been special for him ever since. “I love it. This is the place that’s had me back the most,” he says. “England is more receptive to where I’m at musically. It’s like a home from home.” He goes down to the dancefloor with his shopping bags and sends Digweed out into the corridor.

“I wouldn’t do this for many people but John’s such a great guy - he’s so genuine,” whispers Danny, unveiling the birthday present he’s just bought for Digweed. So what does one internationally famous DJ buy another for his birthday? A huge, beautiful, polished, antique gramophone with the dog listening to His Masters Voice engraved on the side of course. Diggers hovers out of sight, giggling nervously - then he is called in. “John, this is my gift to you,” says T. “That’s fucking amazing,” says Diggers. T “My Grammy to John,” says Danny. The two DJs gather around the gleaming gramophone in awe. “There’s a pitch control...” whispers Danny. And before you know it, they’re opening the damn thing up and playing with the wind-up mechanism and the turntable is spinning around. “Now,” says Danny proudly, "you can play your acetates.”

IN Heaven’s booth at midnight Dubfire from Deep Dish and Digweed bob about grinning as Tenaglia gets on the mic, introduces himself, and wishes Digweed - “the birthday boy” - many happy returns. Up here in the gods it’s like a high-powered cruise liner, Tenaglia the captain, his onlookers the hopeful first officers. Out on the floor, excitement for Tenaglia crashes through the crowd like a rogue wave. Out on the dancefloor four students have travelled from all over the country to be here. “I’ve taken the day off work and everything, driven down from Liverpool as soon as I found out,” says 20 year old Dave. “I haven’t been so happy since I was a kid. Danny Tenaglia has this unbelievable sound, it’s pure sex. It cuts you to the bone.” Bouncing happily next to him in a silver top with a stud in her chin is Emma, who’s 18. She has just two words: “Fucking amazing,” she smiles. “Fight the cheese,” adds Dave. “Fight that cheesy whistle bollocks.”

Tenaglia is livening up his drum tracks with sinister voiceovers, triggered from his bank of effects, which most of his crowd remain blissfully unaware of. They’re just lost in waves of heavily sexual house music. There aren’t many DJs who go to the kind of lengths Danny Tenaglia does to get his sound right. He mixes with six channels open - two for records, two for CD players, two for effects units. Tenaglia uses the CDs for tracks he’s re-edited himself. “Tons of exclusive things - a cappellas, remixes. So many of the records out today are glorified drum tracks so I can liven them up.” There’s a Jam-man delay unit that sends shivers of reverberation through Heaven’s dancefloor and a KAOSS pad that you draw your finger across to turn records inside out and back to front. Tenaglia isn’t just DJing up here - he is tweaking, bending, remixing and recreating as he goes. That’s why his records don’t sound like anyone else’s: he’s remaking them on the spot. Every mix is a one off, gone in 60 seconds.

This two CD mix is based on these London sessions. He calls the sound “soulful, tribal tech-house with a modern yet classic approach”. I call it a breathtaking landscape of dirty soul, finger-clicking techno, wild African grooves, sleazy house. Throughout the mix a fat-arsed, dirty old bass is swinging its ass - a groove that never goes home. It’s an all-night trip that begins with the tropical shifts and percussive roll of Next Evidence’s ‘Sands Of Time’ and ends with the raging techno blizzard of Devilfish’s ‘Live 1999’ “To me, it’s all modern dance music,” says Tenaglia of this spread of music. “It’s the year 2000, get with it or go home.”

The mix is put together with the same kind of wizardry Tenaglia uses in his magic booth. “I edited almost every song on this CD. It’s not about cutting the song, but about keeping the best parts.” That KAOSS pad spaces out the mangled female vocals on Katcha’s ‘Touched By God’ - deep house on a trippy groove. For Onephatdeeva’s Fatboy Slim-Adeva cut-up hit, he lifts off the Adeva vocal and plonks it back down where it was on her original. He took the web of drums from Peace Division’s ‘Tribal Phunk’ and looped it, then lets Dietrich’s squawking, bumpy ‘19 Bullets’ grow into it.

On CD2 Microworld’s ‘Signals’ - a fluttering march of restrained techno - found itself with a few new breakdowns. Two tracks that Tenaglia used to hammer as resident at New York’s Twilo in 1996 are brought to life: DJ Linus’s ethnic-electric ‘Otronoje’ and Lando’s dark, vengeful ‘Magical Digital Drum’. Evolution’s ‘Phoenix’ simmers on sweetly flavoured chords but what you’re hearing, again, is the first half of the record looped up; Danny doesn’t like the rest. Using CDs alongside vinyl, not as a replacement, allows him to use customised tracks like this. “A lot of DJs are missing the point with CDs,” Danny argues. “They’re really missing out or just lazy. It’s just me going the extra mile.”

Back at Bedrock, Tenaglia teases in his remix of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, wired up with scratched record noises and bursts of reverse. As the set ends, wild-eyed guys with piercings plead for another record on the stairs by the booth. “Just the one more please, just the one more,” pleads one. “He’s got to play one more, hasn’t he? He’s got to play one more.” Back at St Martin’s Lane, James hands Danny his record box he’s carried all the way from the club. “You’re such a tease,” James quips. “I like to please,” replies Danny, grinning.

BERLIN, two months later. It’s Love Parade day and GlobalUnderground’s city centre hotel is besieged by fans. Not for Danny Tenaglia, who flew in last night from Ibiza, tanned, relaxed, and with so many record boxes and effects units that a minibus was needed to ferry it all from the airport. Instead, the crowd outside go mad for a glimpse of a man in extra-large sunglasses and a grey boiler suit - Alex from the German Big Brother show, enjoying his 1 5 minutes of fame.

GlobalUnderground are here as the only UK representatives in the famous Love Parade - a vast techno carnival that sends 50-odd truck-sized sound systems down Berlin’s most historic avenues through a crowd of 1 .5 million people. Bela, GlobalUnderground’s Hungarian tour manager, has moved heaven and earth to pull this off. He’s hired a truck and a crew from Hungary and a generator from Hamburg and battled his way through complex Love Parade regulations. Andy the soundman from home is here and Tenaglia’s magic booth set up is rigged up. At the Brandenburg Gate everyone on the truck waits for the music to start while crowds pour over the streets, delirious with excitement.

When the security team that strict Love Parade regulations insist surround each truck fails to turn up, James and Andy become mobile bouncers, helped by Bela and Fritz, the manager from Space. On board there are Hungarians, Germans, South Americans - oh, and a bride and groom in full wedding regalia. Maca from Buenos Aires and Christina from London compare knickers while James wields his big plastic bottle of killer vodka-fizzy pop mix at Danny’s ebullient manager Kevin like a broadsword. Outside fetish-clad space punks rave next to girls in bikinis or clingfilm while sharp-shooters pick out targets with pump-action water- pistols the size of bazookas. Tenaglia is wearing sunglasses with LOVE written on the lenses and his nasty, deep grooves have the crowd hollering and wolf-whistling as the truck rolls through the madness. If he’s not hanging off the side of the truck gobsmacked by the size of the crowds or waving at Carl Cox as he drifts by on what looks like a throne on another float, Danny’s even got a fuzzy little bear mask on. “Wow,” he says later. “I was overwhelmed. I loved the husband and wife show. Then I ran away with the bride.” Later still he talks about how Berlin was a relief from the intense spotlight he’s been under all year. “Just to be able to go out there and party like anyone else. Not be the special DJ - just be one of a million people out there."