Overview
Berlin-based DJ, graphic designer and producer Henrik Schwarz played the Beck's Festival Bar last night as part of Sydney Festival 2011. Schwarz models his sets on jazz, and prefers not to know where each set is going before he mixes them. He dances manically as he arrives on stage, scarf still on and jittering in place. Before long he loses the scarf and his moves become more impassioned. Leaping from machine to machine, hands turning, he looks like an engineer opening the valves on a steam engine.
Deep beats build against a wooden clacking, and white noise builds higher like escaping steam. Stray words are lost behind rough, plaintive wails. Schwarz bounces at his computer like a blissed-out muppet. Some James Brown draws itself over beats, the bass EQed out of his voice. "W'll! I's a maaaan's world…" The sharper techno beat's there, but for Henrik it's the other sounds that rule. And under his fingers they rule well.