Time: about 930 and a few people were gathered in a small basement bar of a funky Clerkenwell drinking hole. As others played pool, Joshua kicked the music off with some safe-as-houses breaks, everyones favourites to get us in the mood.
The lights dimmed and the room started to fill, as people from upstairs or the street were lured in by the loud broken beats and screams of “I love this tune!”
Justin then took over and got the non-dancers dancing with some clubby remixes of what your Dad would call “proper music” (eg Bloc Party, Hot Chip), mixed with some bouncy electro and some old school breaks (remember BT + Tsunami One's Hip Hop Phenomenon anyone?). Warmed it up nicely. It was getting busy too, couldn't see the other end of the bar! Maybe that's because the decks were so bloody high. Not a good venue for short-a**es.
Sinan came on afterwards and ripped it up with his “bo***cks to warm-up” music, nasty bass lines and fat break-beats that soon won over the crowd who were rocking and grooving like there was no tomorrow.
Then – can someone explain this to me? – some random bloke had a short go at mixing. I think we were being too polite to say no, but he seemed to think it was ok to turn up to an event that he hadn't been invited to play at and insist on DJing. So for half an hour, he played his favourite funky house tracks from the Ministry of Sound triple CD mix compilation he had brought with him. I kid you not. No seriously, all he had was one CD box-set.
Justin then got things back to the program (or as someone else put it, “rescued things”) with a further onslaught of great tunes, seesawing effortlessly between breaks and electro, handing over the baton to Sinan with half an hour to go for the final stretch. Killer tunes from the whole night included D Ramirez's remix of Lost (appropriate title!) by Roger Sanchez and The Trophy Twins + Funkagenda's Pete Loves Rat.
The crowd refused to subside, right up until 2am, when possibly the most memorable tune of the night was played, Painkiller by Pendulum vs Freestylers, a drum ‘n' bass tune that got EVERYONE moving in a “back to '92” stylee, like that scene in the record shop from Human Traffic.
No one wanted to end the night there, so it was all back to Justins, including randoms who appeared from upstairs right at the death asking where we were carrying on, and several pissed up revelers from other parties dotted around London. I got to bed at 8am.
Cheers everyone, until next time!
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