I had been looking for an excuse to get back to the Zoo at Benimussa Park - the weird, wild and wonderful party outpost in the hills outside San Antonio - and it came last Saturday in the form of one Monika Kruse, a longtime heroine of the German and global techno circuit.
Whilst Kruse and the ever-eccentric Zoo Project vibes were the main draw cards, I must confess there was another motivation for making the trip cross island: the famous Zoo BBQ plate nom nom nom! Arriving at 9, I bee-lined past the fist-pumping sparkly giraffes, the drinking lions, upside-down umbrellas, swinging hammocks and spiritual energy circles and headed straight for the Zoo BBQ, where I quickly secured a plate with “absolutely everything please” and sat down with a Smirnoff Ice (when in Rome) to have my nosh.
Twenty minutes later and supremely satisfied, I walked past the TreeHouse stage, where sparingly dressed young things were sweating all their pretty body pant off to tech house tunes, and made my way on to the Seal Pit. The amphitheatre style dance floor was full, and Kruse was in the opening stages of a high energy tech-heavy set. In keeping with the fast moving, intense atmosphere of nighttime Zoo Project, Kruse moved through a variety of different styles quite quickly, including raucous build-ups which mobilized the masses across the narrow pool.
Kruse weaved slow and chunky house grooves into tribally snare sessions, for example in the aptly named Snare City, by Gabry Fasano and Riccardo Ferri, later moving on to slightly more progressive tech sounds with Marc Marzinet's Run Wild, then towards the end bringing in funky and melody focused tracks like Andim's Boy Boy Boy, released last year on Monika's own label Terminal M.
The dark stalls were illuminated by roving disco lights which caught flashes of glitter paint from the colourfully decorated crowd, whilst stage side was a riot of activity with leopard suited dances stalking along the floor, tribally adorned acrobats flipping across the stage and starting crowd-clapping alongs with their legs, mermaids flapping their legs in the pool and blowing bubbles and even a bumble bee (of the female human variety) descending on a rope from the roof and startling the smiling and laughing Kruse as it/she abseiled down the wall over the DJ's shoulder.
As always, the Zoo Project provides something unique and Ms Kruse rose to the occasion. It's about so much more than just the music, stimulating the senses and bringing out one's playful side whilst still maintaining a very high quality of DJ bookings. Next week is the Project closing and your last chance to get your sparkly animal on… Giraffes, tigers and snakes are popular costume choices, but I'm thinking hedgehog.
WORDS | Jordan Smith PHOTOGRAPHY | James Chapman
