Yes, Vancouver, There is a Santa Claus

And his name is Alvaro. He brings the best DJs to Vancouver, regardless of how bad you've behaved or what genre you're into. You like deep and/or vocal house? He's got a monthly party at Ginger 62 and he probably brings Miguel Migs to Vancouver every season. Progressive? He's brought Deep Dish three times to Vancouver this year. Trance? John Digweed. Electro? And how!

Monday was the Blueprint Christmas party and to celebrate a wicked year in music Alvaro booked none other than the hot half of the brotherly DJ duo Tiefschwarz - Ali Schwarz.

If it weren't for the fact that Mondays at Shine are known as being the place for electrobreak I wouldn't have been a quarter of stoked as I was because it's a little known fact among the elite that the brothers enjoy DJ Leanne music just as much as they enjoy RC Lair music and they could spring that crap on an unsuspecting crowd at any time. But Mondays at Shine are known as the right time and place to hear some raunch - Amer has had Hi-Score for the past two years and then there was Konrad Black's night a few years back.

Ali's first few tracks were tempered and solid electro - nothing to scream at but they definitely attracted more people to the dance floor without losing anyone. Not sure if it was the fourth or fifth track but he floored everyone by dropping Unit 4's Body Dub. If there was one track that I was sure he wasn't going to play it was this one. Of all the tracks on Misch Masch there isn't one that has been played as much as Body Dub (and I'm not saying this because I heard it every week at the Spanish Banks parties but because I heard it almost every time I partied in Europe this summer). Let's face it, it rocks hard. It took the crowd a long time to get over the fact that he dropped such a bomb and by the time the cheering had subsided he was slipping out of it perfectly into some electro that was surprisingly trancey.

Have you noticed how there's a lot of electro nowadays that bears similarity to that wonderful old school hard trance? It's all concentrated and linear, with details that can repeat themselves in your head for days. Love it.

I'd write more but I can't read my notes. Tiffany got me the best present EVER: a pen that has a built-in light. I thought it was going to save me from this situation but it's not the darkness that makes my writing illegible, it's my impatience and lack of hard writing surface.

For a while he was playing this hard and kind of acid electro and it was fabulous. He floated back into the land of mellow (but still somewhat subversive) and then the night ended. Just like that. Much too quick for my liking. But he did a short encore and that's always cool (and not as routine for the most part anymore).

In the back room there was Johannes Gehrard, Nicky Delgado and Leanne. Did anyone even bother checking it out?

Probably the best Monday night of my life. Thank you Alvaro!