For artists, too, it’s a crowning booking, especially as part of the club’s fabled Saturday-to-Monday marathon. Alongside long-time residents like Steffi, Nick Höppner and nd_baumecker, this year’s Panorama Bar lineups have featured US house royalty - Louie Vega, Floorplan, Honey Dijon and Derrick Carter - as well as European circuit regulars such as Ogazón, Paramida and Sedef Adasï, among countless other shades of house.

In recent years, Panorama Bar has also welcomed a select few Sydney-based DJs. Those appearances come courtesy of The House of Mince’s Peter Shopovski, whose close relationship with the Berlin institution has also seen him bring Berghain and Panorama Bar regulars - including Boris, Roi Perez, Tama Sumo and Lakuti - to Australia.

Sydney mainstays and Mince regulars Simon Caldwell and Annabelle Gaspar are among the locals to get the Pano call-up: Annabelle over three consecutive summers beginning in 2023, and Simon for the first time last May, with a return slated for later this month. Both occupy a special place in Sydney’s clubbing history as co-founders of now-legendary parties: Simon with Mad Racket, running since 1998, and Annabelle’s queer institution Bad Dog, which recently celebrated 25 years.

While distinct as DJs, they both channel decades of experience into enveloping sets that traverse interlocking eras of deep house, electro, techno and other electronic music variations  - something they reaffirm every time they step into the Club 77 booth.

Ahead of Annabelle’s return to Club 77 this weekend, I caught up with the two Sydney stalwarts over Zoom for a freewheeling conversation about playing Panorama Bar and the intersections of Berlin and Sydney’s dancefloors.

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What was your first time playing in Europe? 

Annabelle: My first time playing Europe was around 2017 or 2018. I went to Berlin to play at a Buttons party in the back room with Fred P.

Simon: I had a really good German friend who got me a couple of gigs in 1998. I played at the original Tresor in Berlin; that was pretty exciting. They put me up in a little apartment and it was the week before the Love Parade, so I stayed in Berlin and went. Old Tresor was quite different to the new Tresor - an iconic little spot. That’s where I also met Chris Duckenfield, and then I played a gig at Nitsa in Barcelona with Ian Pooley. My friend was managing all these great artists, and she was like, ‘You go play with him, then play with him’. 

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And then Chris became an important figure in Racket over the years.

Simon: That was the meeting. My friend had maybe not fully informed the Tresor bookers of who I was. I ended up being billed as from the UK, and played back-to-back with Chris all night. We became friends, and then obviously he came back here a lot of times.

Annabelle: I think he ended up at a kick-on at my place one time.

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Annabelle, you’ve played Panorama Bar now three times, right? 

Annabelle: My first time was 2023, 4pm till 8pm Sunday afternoon. The second time, I played on a Saturday [Sunday morning], starting at 4am. And the most recent time was 4pm till 8pm again on Sunday [in September 2025]. It was Curses, myself, and then Budino. 

It went really well. It was probably the busiest I've seen it there. I don't know if there was something happening in Berlin at the time, but there were a lot of really beautiful people. A lot of hot people. Playing on a Saturday was still good, but Sundays tend to feel a lot queerer. The room is definitely more my people.

Simon: I think a lot of the tourists have left by Sunday midday. 

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And Simon, you played for the first time last May. 

Simon: I had an amazing set [time] - Sunday evening, 8pm till midnight. All my German friends were like, How the hell did you get that slot? I played before the close, who was Radio Slave, and after OK Williams. So it was like, big vibes in there. And the other thing is, you have a crew of people who come.

Annabelle: You’re always more stressed about getting people in than actually playing. Especially when you’ve got people flying in from Barcelona and Italy and everywhere, so you can look out and see those familiar faces.

Simon: And you know how far they’ve come and what effort they’ve made. So yeah, pretty special. 

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How many guestlist slots do you get as an artist?

Simon: Five free, five paying. That sounds like a lot, but it's not. 

Annabelle: Then there’s all those unsolicited new friends that you get on Instagram that are like, ‘Oh, I really love your music.’ I had about 12 last time.

Simon: The only reason I knew that they put it up on the Berghain website was I looked at my phone that day and I had all these message requests.

Annabelle: Someone wanted to give me Bitcoin. Another person was going to give me a free handbag.

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When approaching the four-hour slot at Panorama Bar, do you go in with a sense of some moments you want to hit, or let it flow in the moment?

Annabelle: I just play what moves me, what makes me feel high naturally, and hope that that resonates with the dancefloor. And obviously you read the floor, so you'll see if something's really working and if something's not. 

I didn't know exactly what track I was going to start with, but with four hours, there are certain tracks where you think, hopefully I can squeeze this one in somewhere. And then I have a section of maybe three or four that could be good at the end. But it is definitely a flow, and vibing off the energy in the room. You've got to play from what really moves you, because then people will feel that. If you’re not playing from where you're feeling it, it just doesn't flow as well.

Simon: It would feel weird to me to fully plan a four hour set. You have to work with what's in front of you, and you’re creating what’s in front of you at the same time. You do go up and down and have some tracks in mind you really want to play - and you might work a section around getting to that particular track. Then you'll probably forget to play a couple, and you'll get to the end of the set and go, ‘Oh fuck!’ It seems like four hours is a lot, but it’s not that many.

Annabelle: I know. I could just keep going.

Simon: It’s funny how long sets have become this ‘thing’ to some people, but you know, it’s normal. 

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And Annabelle, your daughter was in attendance this most recent time, right? 

Annabelle: My partner, my daughter and, oh my god, so many friends that flew in. My daughter's been travelling around Europe, so she met us in Berlin, and we stayed there for a week. She was pretty excited to get in.

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How old is she? 

Annabelle: She’s 18. I told Val, who is Budino, ‘My daughter’s here.’ And she was like, ‘No way, my mum’s here!’ Like, the full family experience. I guess some people go to an ordinary church, and Panorama Bar was like our family church gathering for the day.  [Note: the family affair even made it to Reddit - below.]

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And how did your closing track - Dream Wife’s ‘Leech’ - go down?

Annabelle:  It went down really well. I wasn't sure. I thought it was gonna be quite polarising, because it's a punk track. But the room exploded. It was pretty amazing, actually. Dream Wife are incredible, and it also had a message attached to it.

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Simon, [Berlin-via-Brisbane DJ producer] Claire Morgan gave me a few updates about tracks you played throughout the set. Do you remember what you closed with?

Simon: Please tell me.

Davina, ‘Don’t You Want It’.

Simon: Ah, I managed to save that for four hours. That’s pretty good. 

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Claire also mentioned you played numerous Mad Racket classics. 

Simon: When you're going to that sort of place for the first time, you  definitely want to bring some of your big records that have been big for you personally over the years; where someone would go, ‘Oh yeah, that's a really Simon track.’ 

I was so freaking nervous. I think having the extra people come specifically - you know, Barney [Kato] flew over. So I was, like, really nervous and took about three and a half hours to relax. I'm super glad to get back there in a few weeks. Now having done it before, it'll be much easier to put a lot of that stuff out of my head and just focus on just having a good time and playing well. 

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When’s the last time you felt nerves like that for a set? 

Simon: I was a bit nervous before the last Bad Dog, to be honest. The bar's high, you know? Any gig where you know the bar is gonna be really high. It’s only certain gigs now, definitely, but this would be one of them.

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Having only been on the dancefloor, I can imagine Panorama Bar is an intense room to play. 

Simon: I think the club is run so professionally that you've just got a little chain there [cordoning the booth], but nobody fucks with it. It was chill, but it's fucking loud. They’ve got two big Funktion-One [monitors] to the left and right of you, and a big sub under you. 

The thing that’s hard to get used to for me was that most of the sound is on your left, because you’re sort of playing, like, perpendicular to the actual sound system. It did take a little bit of getting used to. [Note: Simon played digital and vinyl, and Annabelle played digital.] 

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Annabelle, what are your reflections on Berghain and Panorama Bar as queer spaces?

Annabelle: On the Sundays I’ve played, they tend to be pretty queer. It’s a sort of space that’s pretty open inside. You know, what happens in Berghain, stays in Berghain. I think the no-photo policy really does make people have to interact with one another and sort of vibe off each other, which is how we communicate with each other in the queer community. It’s a really well-run club. 

Simon: Because it’s so famous, I always just remind my straight friends, you know it’s a queer club, right? Because not everybody even knows that. They might have read some articles about it, but they don't know that the most important thing about its identity is it’s a queer club. It’s important to remember that. 

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Was there any feeling you had of representing Sydney or Australia in that space?  

Annabelle: Before my first time there, I went to a friend’s property and I sampled Australian sorts of sounds; around water holes and bird sounds. And I used those to start the set. Obviously they were traditionally sort of Australian sounds, and I think it was just more to make me feel more comfortable. 

Simon: Peter [Shopovski] has booked so many [Berghain and Panorama Bar] artists. When that sort of relationship happens, it does become kind of reciprocal in a way. Most Australians have to literally go and live in Europe to get those kinds of bookings. You know, there's a lot of great DJs in Australia. There should be more of it.