Williamsburg, NY – Don’t Expect Much Sleep at New York’s Marcy Hotel

Williamsburg, NY – Zev Eisenberg and Gadi Mizrahi provoke extreme reactions. As the production duo Wolf + Lamb; as DJs at their Marcy Hotel parties; and via their leftfield house label – also called Wolf + Lamb – these two Jewish Brooklyn-born music fanatics inspire devotion. Not all of it wise.

“Numerous times,” says Zev, “people say to me, ‘I came to the Marcy a couple of years ago, and afterwards I was like, ‘I could live in New York!’ Then I moved here, I’m waiting, and there’s no parties. What’s going on? You guys have a party every seven weeks, that’s awesome, but what am I supposed to do in between?'”

Such is modern New York. Despite respected underground clubs like ReSolute and Blckmarket Membership, clubland has yet to recover from the Guiliani-era “clean up”, which closed many venues. Yet Wolf + Lamb’s modest, 500-capacity parties resonate globally. DJ Magazine calls them, with Berlin’s Panorama Bar, “the ultimate pilgrimage for thrill-seeking dance tourists”.

But that’s one difficult pilgrimage, given that Gadi, 34, and Zev, 28, now only advertise their parties at 24 hours’ notice, to avoid being overrun with tourists. Despite the hype, they’re determined to evolve at their own pace. Particularly Zev, who, though he is now in recovery, has twice been diagnosed with cancer.

In lieu of a visit to the Marcy, Love Someone, the duo’s debut album, shows why the Wolf + Lamb project has got people so excited. A set of fractured, psychedelic, sometimes provocatively slow house music that owes as much to Moodymann or leftfield disco as it does minimal techno, it’s distinct and original, the product of a singularly creative environment.

That environment is the Marcy Hotel, which isn’t a hotel at all. The name is an in-joke, as is Zev’s elaborate spoof website for this “AAA five-diamond” luxury hideaway. In reality, this three-storey Williamsburg building was a shell, which Wolf + Lamb (“wolf” and “lamb” being the Hebrew for Zev and Gadi’s names) made into a recording studio/party space, office and apartments, and where they run a label that’s Factory Records-like in its idealism.

Deliberately, they have fostered a close-knit creative community, with friends and musicians living on site. More dramatically, Wolf + Lamb don’t ask their artists to sign contracts. This leaves the likes of Soul Clap, Deniz Kurtel and 20-year-old wunderkind Nico Jaar free to create some very strange, soulful electronic music: “We’ve told them, ‘Open it up, be crazy.'”

That can, though, make it awkward when promoters book Wolf + Lamb expecting banging club tunes. “There’s still places I won’t play,” says Gadi. “Like Italy; I’m too nervous; I know they want hard techno.” But Wolf + Lamb fans will follow them anywhere. You don’t need to move to New York, just open your mind.