Welcome to the maiden voyage of a new column dedicated to autobiographical accounts of Madrid´s club scene--the best of house, trance, techno, and everything in between. We´ll keep coming at you with new editions detailing where to be and why. So keep coming back. This time Cool, Cream, and Room at Stella were all visited on a Thursday nite in late January. Drivers, start your engines...

If Clubs were tapas bars… we'd be drunk and broke:

2.30 a.m.: Cream

For said atmosphere, look no further than Cream on Thursday nites. Don't get there till at least 2, when the first wave of dancers seem to be firmly in place. The next ones will come around 3.30.

Cream is held at a "multisala" venue called Flamingo that somehow plays commercial pop the next evening (yikes!). As I descended the staircase from street level and checked things out, I couldn't imagine trance music not playing here. It's darkish with some reptilian interlocking rectangular pattern lit up across all the walls. A small group of people danced half-heartedly toward the middle of the semicircular dance floor, which is sunken a few feet below the periphery area, which itself has room to dance in addition to lots of benches to chill. The DJ booth is in front of everything, at the point where the near part of the floor gives way to the platform/stage. There's also a small area with circular tables to chill out. On the opposite side of the platform, the peripheral walkway gives way to a more open chill out and dance area. The second of Cream's two bars is back here. The first, situated perfectly on the left as you enter the area, greets you with blue lights and lots of people hanging out, bullshitting, flirting, being wasted, etc. There's plenty of room to hang out and enjoy your drink here while not being the middle of the noise and madness.

Things were clearly just getting underway here, but the energy was crackling from the start. DJ Robert Rodriguez, just getting into the groove of things, was throwing down some danceable if not a little repetetive trance. A little low on the creativity side, droning even at times (this, of course, from a sober perspective), but the crowd was down and we pressured him to feed us more. Which he did; turned out he was just warming up.

Let me say now that I have issues with trance´s reliance on repetition. I think the nature of the music-more than house or techno, in comparison-is such that it can sometimes be too easy for DJs to feed pill-chomping ravers the same beat over and over without much variation, and without much resistance from a zoned out (or incredibly zoned in) crowd. Like most electronic dance music, trance is at its best when the DJ doesn´t rely on the same beats and patterns for too long, and instead keeps various things in flux at once. Gotta be creative and unpredictable: this is the most obvious difference between the likes of Rodriguez, who just got better all nite, and less able DJs who stick to some formulaic set.

As we approach 3 a.m. I can't help but get giddy as more people come in-many of which women are looking not bad at all-and suddenly I realized I had to stop looking around and start dancing. Elizabeth and I strode into the middle of the quarter-full floor, ground zero. Eventually, as they always do, the followers followed and realized it was ok to dance even when there aren't that many people. After a few minutes, what had existed only in the peripheral areas of Cream had ascended upon the hole in the middle, and suddenly there was ass shaking and head swaying all over the place. Energy!

(here I want to write but feel like I can't/shouldn´t write: It was wnderful too because it wasn't hard core late nite dancing when you've got a nasty look on your face because you know you're so cool and the music is your devil's heartbeat: no: this was a very self-aware, overtly fun and funny dance exhibition we were putting on. We played with the random and sometimes boring and certainly predictable beats by acting out scenes, spanning the spectrum between booty liscious grinding and happy-to-be-hardcoreness, always making fun of ourselves and the act of being all self-conscious in the first place. The proof of the strategy's success was soon obvious as everyone else seemed to just let themselves go in front of the dj booth as they hadn't dared when we walked in. Sweeeeeeet…)

From that point forward, more people streamed in, more people went nuts on the dance floor, and it got harder to mark and maintain the 3 squared meters that I like to have when dancing. Well, the platform was empty. A shame, too, because not only does it afford a great view of the semi circle of people around you, but it's also right next to the DJ booth, which means you get to tower over the maestro and watch him work-or scream at him in support. When the chosen break beat presented itself, I got up there and did both. Again, more people followed, and soon people were howling at the wonderful highs that Rodriguez would build up to and then let go on his willing victims. I must admit that at a few separate points I got goose bumps from the enraged bliss of the whole thing. Suddenly he released a great tribal beat that we all latched ourselves onto, and from there it was another 20 minutes of pure heaven and unity and communication through music. Smiles were out in force, arms raised in the air, howls echoing in unison. In short, the reason why I go clubbing.

After the highest of that high came the rude intrusion of reality. My legs started throbbing, my throat was drier than every piece of clothing, and I knew I had seriously dipped into my adrenaline reserves. Even worse, I still had one more place to go! (Bitch, moan, bitch moan…) After chilling on the bench with a fat smile, I decided it was now or never to switch venues. I didn't really want to go, but a man's gotta do his job, and the long walk to the Room would invigorate me, right?

Cream lies on calle Mesonero Romanos, 13 off Gran Via. Metro: Gran Via, L5.

Next step of the route is Room at Stella, if you want to go to the previous move, check it here: Cool