Techno Tuesday: Patrick Topping shares his BPM narrative
Techno Tuesday is a feature on Dancing Astronaut documenting the culture of underground dance music. We’ll bring you exclusive interviews, tracks, and narratives from artists within the techno, tech house, and deep house world in an effort to shed light on some of the best talent outside the world of mainstream dance music.
Patrick Topping makes tech house look easy. Over the past year, the Newcastle producer has championed the underground with successful releases on esteemed labels like Suara, Hot Creations, and Adam Beyer’s Truesoul. He’s also proven a rising star in Ibiza, coming off two successful seasons as a resident at Paradise party at DC-10.
Recently, Topping was featured on Pete Tong’s first ever live BBC Radio 1 show from Los Angeles, going back-to-back with Eats Everything for the seminal broadcast. He’s also just returned from The BPM Festival, where he performed everywhere from the All Gone Pete Tong party to Paradise in The Jungle. In the spirit of Techno Tuesday, we’ve given Patrick the platform to share his BPM experience in full.
BPM was yet again an amazing experience. Last year was my first time there, and our Paradise party at Blue Venardo in the Jungle was still one of my favorite parties ever. Going into this year’s festival I had quite high hopes as to what 2016’s would be like, and it didn’t disappoint!
The first few days I arrived in Playa Del Carmen were spent trying to resist all the parties that were going on each day and avoiding mates so I didn’t get tempted haha. This way I could keep myself fresh for the two events I was playing – Paradise on Wednesday night and then All Gone Pete Tong the next day.
Unfortunately the rain got so bad Paradise had to be cancelled, as the site had flooded and wasn’t safe, but it was rescheduled for the next night. Luckily the rain kept off enough for it to go ahead, and with the exact same lineup too. Hopefully this didn’t cause too much disappointment for anyone, but personally it worked out better for me as it meant I no longer had gigs in consecutive days. I knew how good Paradise was last year and it went on till midday, so if it went ahead as originally planned, then I would have had to somehow peel myself away to get some sleep in before for Pete Tong’s party the next day, as I was playing at 4:30PM. This new way I got to play Pete’s, then head straight on to Paradise and stay until the end.
All Gone Pete Tong was at Wah Wah Beach Club, a huge palapa right on the ocean front and it was packed. Last minute they got a late later license so I got to play longer; going two hours just before Pete took over was amazing. The atmosphere was wicked and I was buzzing over having Tiga, someone I really look up to, tell me he really enjoyed my set!
After that, we headed to a taco place I was shown by locals when I was in Playa a few months later to play at La Santenera. It’s literally right next door to the club and it doesn’t look much, as it’s just a little basic take-out window, but the tacos are honestly the nicest I’ve ever had! Can’t recommend it enough.
Then it was clean to Paradise! Last year’s venue Blue Venardo is sadly no longer around, but Paradise this year took place at the newest, most talked about venue of BPM, aptly titled The Jungle. A massive 7,000 capacity festival within a festival site, out in the jungle. I played the second stage after Skream and it was so much fun. The scale of the venue was incredible, yet it still managed to hold onto the special remote/cool vibe of being out in the jungle. After that it was back to some big house, where Jamie Jones & Richy Ahmed played a mint after hours set for hours!
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