Special Disco Version at Santo’s Party House in NY is basically like James Murphy & Pat Mahoney’s Fabric mix come to life. Which is to say, awesome!

Santo’s Party House, the club Murphy co-owns along with Andrew WK, is ideal, as well as obviously designed by some serious A/V geeks. The walls above the bars and around the dance floor were lined with speakers, boxes of 10” cones hanging overhead, piping high-end while some sub massaged the dance floor with bass. One or two guys manned an expensive, colorfully lit-up sound board all night. A friend told me the club had their sound installed by the same guy who did the legendary Paradise Garage and/or Danceteria. A guy named Vlad said the sound reminded him of a club in Berlin whose name I couldn’t make out due to his accent—it just sounded like he was saying Berlin again but mumbling, or maybe “Being”. Anyway, in Berlin. (Segal with the assist: Berghain.) The place had the biggest disco ball I’ve ever seen, Roman columns on the dance floor (so Hercules) and it looked like they had a neon “Special Disco Version” sign behind the elevated DJ booth, although that may have just been a projection.

The place was full—and full of Seattle expats, including Byron Kalet of the Journal of Popular Noise and DJ Glitterpants—but never so full that you couldn’t easily carve out some room on the dance floor. Murphy and Mahoney mixed disco 12”s all night long (“hey, where’s their laptop?”), bringing the energy up and down several times throughout the night, sometimes smoothly mixing, sometimes not bothering (which I guess you get away with a few times a night when everyone knows you can really mix). It was a hip scene, but not a hipster scene. There was some wicked vogueing happening. I have to say, it was everything that Studio dreams of being. I still wish I’d gotten to see the Juan MacLean last night too though; that video looks awesome (and for the record, Juan is a deadpan comic genius).