Sky Room is one of my personal favourite venues in Brisbane. The rooftop bar, with its sprawling balcony that overlooks the chaos of the Fortitude Valley makes it the perfect sanctuary to soak up Brisbane’s balmy summer evenings, and an even better venue to host a party with San-Fran based DJ and Dirtybird label head Claude VonStroke. Unfortunately, on Sunday afternoon, storms in the wake of ex-tropical cyclone Oswald wreaked havoc in Brisbane. Cyclonic winds and torrential rain caused many road closures throughout the city and I know made it difficult for a lot of people to get to the venue.
I arrived in time to catch local talent and Bowler Bar resident Jawgoh. Despite the heavy rain pouring in sideways through the open balcony doors, the 21 year-old warmed up the plate nicely with some classy deep house, and sure enough, the dancefloor began to fill up.
Sky Room came alive when Claude VonStroke aka Barclay Crenshaw arrived. There were cheers, hi-fives and pats on the back as he made his way through the crowd and up to the decks. Smiles were all around as VonStroke welcomed everyone into his weird world of techno and house. His set comprised of a fun mix of Dirtybird releases old and new - his record label known for its own breed of dirty house music with hip-hop and drum and bass influences; along with some other surprises that definitely caught everyone off-guard. Kicking off with the Euro summer anthem, 'Infinity' by Infinity Ink, everyone sitting on the couches was lured straight to the dancefloor. Other highlights were when he dropped his recent release with Kry Wolf “Turbosteppa”, “Pump It” by KiNK and Mark Romboy, the shimmering ascending human vocals of “Vocal Chords”, and lastly Pleizer’s UK bass/garage influenced “Pleizer Anthem”. What I particularly loved about VonStroke is his clear love for what he does. He laughed, smiled, danced and partied with the crowd, which gave his set a warm and friendly, even house party-like vibe.
Picking up after VonStroke was Sky Room’s own Miss Mich who kept up the pace with her jacking tech and deep house. It’s not surprising that she started off as a dancer in her home country of South Africa, as I’ve never seen a DJ dance and mix quite so well at the same time.
This was my third occasion seeing Claude VonStroke, and he manages to bring something totally different and surprising to the table each time. All in all, despite the cold and crazy weather outside (which I think at times impacted on the sound quality at the venue), VonStroke didn’t disappoint in warming up Sky Room into a hot and sweaty mess of people generally having a great time, and the support acts all followed suit. Once again, the crew at Auditree and Sky Room have thrown another great party in Brisbane. Can’t wait for the next one.