sammy dee in ny tee

If you had stumbled into Filter 14, in the meat-packing district, around 2 a.m. on Saturday, you would have found yourself packed into a dark, hazy room with about 100 dancers. And you might have noticed that something sharp and insistent was tapping the top of your skull — the beat.

The occasion was a rare New York appearance by Sammy Dee, a Berlin D.J. and producer affiliated with the puckish micro-house label Perlon. (To find out why Perlon has a small but fanatical cult of American fans, seek out the immersive double-CD compilation "Superlongevity," which is full of hiccupping minimalist dance tracks and hazy scrambled sound effects.) Sammy Dee is also half of the duo Pantytec, whose fidgety debut album, "Pony Slaystation" (Perlon), builds austere but off-kilter beats out of throwaway sounds: crackling static, echoing wrong notes, tiny vocal snippets.

Like many of Germany's most appealing D.J.'s, Sammy Dee loves to find out how much you can eliminate from dance music before it's no longer danceable, and at Filter 14 he gravitated toward clipped, rubbery rhythms. Every beat hit the speakers with a thwack and then bounced back sharply. Sammy Dee maintained this elastic momentum all night. But something was happening: the rhythms that first sounded like miniature cranial assaults slowly began to sink in, and began to sink. After half an hour or so you might have felt them not in your head but in your chest; the beat wasn't pushing you down but holding you up.

Sometime after 3 Sammy Dee played a great lopsided Soulphiction track called "Computer Scared?!" The rhythm sank even lower. By that time you would have felt as if the beat wasn't bouncing against the top of your skull but bouncing against the bottom of your shoes. And if you had looked down at your feet, you might have noticed that you were dancing.