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CLUB REVIEW: D-EDGE

Moving with Ellen Allien & Adam Saville

Club eggheads around the world don't need to be told the significance of Sao Paulo's D-Edge club.

The city's only superclub with an underground music policy, Renato Ratier's sleek, black maze of space-age lasers and flashing LEDs — where eyes are satisfied as much as our ears — celebrates those very special weekly occasions, Thursdays, with Moving, one of the clubs most popular and well respected shindigs which regularly welcomes the world's most revered house and techno talent.

And this particular Thursday has been made extra special by the fact that Friday is a national holiday, followed by another on Tuesday (with "work" on Monday in between), leaving the ever eager party animals of Brazil to enjoy a three (or five?) day weekend just as the summer sun is returning to blazing heights.

To help these red-blooded, olive-skinned beauties of Sao Paulo also reach suitable heights on the eve of what's likely to be followed by mass exodus to surrounding beaches, Moving's crack team of promoters have drafted in BPitch boss Ellen Allien to take over the prestigious, light/sound-sensitive main room for three hours, while I, personally, have the honour of taking over the middle room to open my mini-tour of Brazil (next up Anzu, then Sirena), which looks more like the tunnel to Daft Punk's space pod than anything like a conventional club — also for three hours — which I'm very excited about indeed.

Even at early doors, around 1am — well, early by Brazilian standards — the place is already heaving. China, the trusty resident, dropping skeletal grooves to a stirring main room below.

Meanwhile, Justino is working the noir, flourostrip-lined second room above, dropping more energetic bassline house bangers from the likes of Dusky and Shadow Child to make sure the room is jumping before I jump on at 2pm.

Curious as to how my set went? It lasted almost three-and-half-hours, but don't let me blag on about it, you can listen and download it below...

 Feeling exhausted after sending every last drop of energy (and tune) onto a loyal and emphatic dancefloor, adrenalin still pumping through my veins, it's time to pop upstairs to the smaller, but more sultry, red-panelled upstairs room where China is making another, albeit slightly groovier contribution, before catching Ellen dropping full-blown piano house to a rapturous room rammed to the rafters until eventually accepting there's nothing left in the tank and jumping in a taxi to the hotel.

All three rooms still packed at 5am and the roof smoking terrace mobbed, there's still plenty more to come from this morning alone, and it's only Friday. With Seth Troxler waiting in the wings for a Saturday night slot, the weekend is only getting started.