My hotel is beside these two concrete immensities in their wrapping of steel and glass. Kuala Lumpur is perhaps my favourite place to party in on the planet. Rob is a pale Australian who looks like a young Keith Richards with black spiky hair, high cheekbones and big brown eyes, known for wearing smart attire despite the sticky humid heat.
His club and attached restaurant Drift are a gathering place for the local party people; an array of Malaysians, British, Australians, Iranians, Russians, Romainians and Brazilians and more. Privi is modestly sized but dreamy, its big, warm, clear soundsystem tuned up perfectly and turned up high. Pictures of Charlie Chaplin hang on the walls and multicoloured lights flash in time to the house and techno. She invites me to spin for a while to the heaving, rowdy yet musically educated crowd.
I buy a coconut with a straw in it from a roadside vendor. It makes a lovely change from beer. I decide to have lunch at the Vietnam Cafe in the searing bright midday sunshine and then wander through the busy street markets back to the hotel to rest. Kyo, however, is just across the street. Tall, with newly dyed black hair and the cheekbones and deep brown eyes of her Romanian birthplace, Daniela arrived in Penang in Malaysia in , and has been throwing parties around the region and DJing under the alias Biscuit ever since.
It rocks on until AM. I set my alarm for a three-hour sleep. My hangover starts to fade under her careful questions and I possibly even start to make sense alongside a cool assembly of mainly local DJs, promoters and artists.
As we finish, monsoon rains clatter on the roof and the heavens open for an almighty session, the thunderous claps like some huge bassy soundsystem in the sky. The distinctive Butterfly Room has 50, butterflies hanging from the ceiling. The Illustrious Blacks from NYC are playing disco and house tonight, and the duo are as striking as the venue itself in masks dripping with slim metal chains, looking like cool superheros from another galaxy. They play a mixture of big and uplifting yet never cheesy disco anthems and re-edits occasionally mixed with more introspective house, while the flamboyantly dressed, diverse crowd lap up their every move.
