Abbi's Adventures 1st Birthday: Oval Space Music 1st February 2014 @ Oval Space

A year ago to the day I had been to the first club event that I ever reviewed. A year on, I was out with the same people and a load more friends and techno acquaintances I've met along the way to enjoy an anniversary night out. After a month of the usual staying in for January being sensible and skint, it was time to get my stomp on.

I hadn’t been to Oval Space before but heard good things about it last year, with the only grumble being it that it was a sweat box, so I was relieved to arrive to a pretty chilly main room at midnight. I’d not been out for nearly a month and had really been looking forward to hearing the spectacular line up of residents Jozif & Fritz Zander with Shifted, Luke Slater, Jerome Sydenham and legend Robert Hood.

The UK’s very own Shifted was on the decks when I arrived and the place was about half full. Us Londoners are slowly catching onto the European way of things and heading out much later, pushing on well into Sundays. There was plenty of room to dance down at the front so, I grabbed myself the first very reasonably priced vodka and lemonade of the night, and got down to business.

Soaking up the venue; it was spacious, with a sofa

Outside at Oval Space

area, bright clean toilets, decent lighting, posh crisps and popcorn available at the bar, a great undercover fairy light lit outdoor bar and smoking area outside and a great balcony outside the length of the building. Added to this are floor to ceiling  windows right down one side of the entire main room, with raised platforms down each side of the dance floor, the back and behind the DJ booth – which creates a great feeling of togetherness amongst the crowd from wherever you stand. The layout works really well, aside from the fact that the ladies loos are right near the front of the dance floor so if you are anywhere else in the room, they are a total battle to get to. On the upside at least you can dance as you queue. 

I had a vague sense of de ja vu. The last time I saw Shifted was at a venue called Undercurrent in Amsterdam. That too was really open with floor to ceiling windows down one side. And that also had a sound system that did not exactly knock my socks off.

Shifted

Shifted’s set built nicely. It was spacious, industrial and relatively chilled to start, building in intensity as the crowd grew larger and by the end of his set the place was heaving and the tunes were doing the same. It was a well crafted warm up set that totally responded to the crowd and grew with it. Hats off. However, the volume was too quiet. I was right at the front and there was barely any bass and whilst the tunes were awesome, they weren’t loud enough to get under my skin. One of these days I will get to see him play somewhere with a kick arse sound system and will no doubt be blown away.

Next up was Luke Slater… 

Although I own a few of his records from over the

Luke Slater

years, I’d somehow not seen Luke DJ before and was looking forward his set. The sound was still too quiet, although at least at the front it was better than the back.

The sound system at this venue is what let down this night. I have a distinct lack of much to say about the music because it was incidental to the rest of night. I know that there are noise restrictions that have to be observed, but there are ways to make a bigger impact without breaking those restrictions. The speakers here are virtually all at one end of the room, flown high so that the sound carries across the entire venue, with one small speaker hung either side of the room two thirds back. What is there is good – it’s just not enough. The bass is shockingly low. I am sure that if there were a lot more speakers spread out around the venue, then the sound would appear louder without the volume needing to be turned up too high. It needs addressing. It’s not the worst I have ever encountered but when everything else at the venue is above average, to have a sound system that is not integral to the design of the dance floor – well you may as well have just not bothered with the rest of it in my view. There is a great video on YouTube of Luke’s set and you can hear entire conversations happening, witness the shuffles and the energy:


Luke played a blend of clean laptop mixes and raw vinyl. You could hear the difference between the two and the more pumping engaging parts of his set were played on vinyl... everyone was just shuffling about and then every now and then came alive and danced to some slamming techno. The energy came in waves from shuffley background techno to some filthy dirty lift the roof off shenanigans, with the biggest crowd pleasers having that trademark tinge of electro. It’s just a shame that these amazing chunks of the set were only brief spurts and the set didn’t build or have any flow. There were also plenty of skips and mistakes in the beat matching – and when you look at the fact he was mixing vinyl with no headphones on sometimes, you can see why. Overall, I prefer his production to his DJing.

James Ruskin

Robert Hood cancelled this gig due to snow preventing take off from America. This put a bit of a dampener on the anticipation that had been building pre-event but James Ruskin stepped in to make up the numbers. Personally we’d had enough of being near the front by now. We appeared to be fighting for space with three verrrrrry drunk girls who had no idea how to stand up straight or in one place. And then there was another one with a rucksack – it’s just as well they check bags for knives as its always tempting to just cut the straps on dance floor rucksacks. They should be banned. We traded volume for sanity and the chance to chat and get to the bar.

The vibe of the place was really nice. Everyone in a good mood, good tunes, for many a first night out since New Year. I’d not seen my mates in weeks and it was wonderful to stomp about a bit and
natter. So that is exactly what we did for the next hour. I heard some 80s old school rave, a touch of rap and 80s synth pop from Ruskin but I really wasn’t paying attention, or dancing. From a distance he appeared to be playing what he assumed the Robert Hood fans wanted to hear. It’s certainly not a set like I’ve ever heard him play before. I’m not sure how well it was received as I was being that annoying wanker that won’t shut up whilst you try and dance. To be fair, everyone around us was doing the same. It was pointless to keep complaining that it wasn’t loud enough and we were never going to get swept away by it, so we just had a great social instead. What we could hear provided a great audio backdrop.

We decided to leave half way through Ruskin’s set to continue our nattering at home and get some sleep so that we were fresh to head back out for some Sunday dance floor action. So, we missed the final set from what I hear was an allegedly very wasted Jerome Sydenham. Ah DJing: the only job where you can turn up for work quite obviously twatted off your face and nobody seems to care. I can’t comment as I wasn’t there but I am told we didn’t miss much.


Nothing about this night offended me. Nothing about this night made it particularly stand out. I will be going back to Oval Space at the end of this month to see Ame on the 28th Feb. I shall reserve my venue judgment until then. I gave Fire a bad review for a Kompakt night being way too quite a while ago and then, on New Year’s Day the sound there was great and I had the best night ever. So, watch this space… Oval Space ticks many many boxes and may well win my heart yet.

This is not a photo from this event, just the venue in general.

Sat 24th August 2013 - The Hydra: Blueprint Feat. Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood & James Ruskin at Electric Brixton

This blog comes to you direct from my hammock in the sunshine, fully rested at last from last weekends clubbing. One can recover from such things in minimal time if they are allowed to sleep. My cat has unfortunately taken it upon himself to howl at me several times a night all week and wake me up for food and play. Finally I got a solid 8hrs last night just in time to bring my A game for tonight's Colony at Corsica. That will be a blog for next week - This week we talk about the long awaited and much anticipated Hydra event on bank holiday weekend.

Following an afternoon of indoor picnics (the weather was awful!!!) and amusing repertee with friends old and new, we trundled off to Brixton ready for a fine old time. Meeting Hilda and TIR at the door to Brixton Electric I was pleasantly surprised to find no queue, no moodiness from the bouncers and a quick service at the bar. We had arrived relatively early and were off to a good start!

Samuel Kerridge

Simple red lights reminded me of Lost. No Lost this August bank holiday - a first for many years, but who needs Lost when there is a line up like this instead?! The first set was from  Samuel Kerridge whom I had never heard of but will more than happily hear again. All wrong for a first set but amazing none the less. I felt like I was on a giant cavernous alien spaceship listening to various mechanics creaking and moving about. The set progressed to more lively beats and into a lighter more Space Odyssey vibe. The tempo raised and haunting high pitched sounds droned in the background with sonar bleeps a plenty. DSL said it sounded a bit like Empty Set. It really was a storming set and would have been better placed later in the night but, there was no one else on the line up you could really expect to play first, so that was that.

Robert Hood

A totally different mood for the second set. The stage changed from red lights to blue, again reminding me of Lost with it's Red Room and Blue Room. Having seen Robert Hood play at 50 Weapons earlier this year I was hugely looking forward to this. He started hard and fast and keet it that way. Good old Detroit sounds, the odd nanoflash of disco synth, scattered soulful vocals and melody carefully hidden amid bass bass bass bass bass bass. However, I heard a track I knew well coming on. I always think it's Basement Jaxx every time I hear it, and it kept dropping in and out so I could almost have just been hearing things... but it kept coming. And then I knew what it was. Again. Just like at 50 Weapons, he dropped Bucketheads - The Bomb. Again it was fun and stupendous but I felt slightly disappointed that he was pulling the same party trick out the bag. That didn't deter me from jumping about.

Underground Resistance

Next up was the supposed highlight of the night: Timeline from Underground Resistance. All of us were keen to see "The baddest group of sonic electronic warriors in the world" do their thing and give us an education. There have mixed reviews all over the interwebs this week, a bevvy of arguments and opposing opinions but mine is as follows... Worst set of the night. Killed my mood. Massive disappointment. Let me expand:

We have a DJ, one guy on synths, Mike on keys, and a sax player. Initially it was enthralling, the sax player was amazing and we were treated to snippets of The Bells and were easing into a great live set. But after about 15mins I had had enough. You would think that such a stellar ensemble would have their own sound guy but no, they had an in-house tech who had been dealing with DJs up to now and was no good at changing things on the fly. Having flown in from a performance at Dekmantle, via a same day set at Electric Frog in Glasgow there cannot have been a sound check before the event. And it showed. A lot. All we could hear was the sax. He was out the front of the stage doing some call and response with Mike on a Keytar but Mike's sound was lost. The sax player was quite clearly very talented but was also VERY self indulgent and did not know when to stop. The set would have benefited greatly from him shutting the fuck up here and there so that we could hear the beat and actually dance. The more it went on the more exhausting it was and the more my patience wore thin. It was live improvisational jazz sax and nowt else.

Finally, he finally stopped and the beats and synths pushed forward and picked up, only to trail along doing not much for ages, with the occasional build up here and there but with the levels to low for us to hear it clearly so everything sounded monotonous. Often they all sound like they are playing totally different tracks. It wasn't hideous, I didn't mind it (my fave comment used on Masterchef when John doesn't like something but appreciates the effort). Everything bumbled along nicely enough, the room had a generally nice vibe, the dance floor gained some space whilst people took the chance to go to the bar and vanish off to other parties and there were many many smiley people soaking up their heroes. Then the musicians kind of petered out and vanished leaving just the DJ on stage alone playing similar stuff but with the right levels and correct smattering of sax. It was FANTASTIC. I zipped off to the loo and returned to see the full band back but this time the sax player was on a laptop. Again it all plodding along and I could just about make out good things being layered up but the mid levels were still too low all I could hear was bass and top end. All the interesting stuff was lost. Then I got a priceless text from TIR at the back of the room telling me that EVD was so bored that she was listening to PETDuo on her headphones. That was a little much I thought but then jazz is not really EVD's first love. 

The front venue had by this time turned into a sweatbox and we thought we would head outside for a cigarette. Once again I found myself outside on a roof terrace in the pissing rain so I could watch others smoke. It was preferable to staying inside and losing my sanity to sax though and I bumped into Ash and had a good old whinge with him about jazz improvisation. 

We went back into the main room and it was all ending to rapturous applause and then an encore. The encore was the clearest sound I heard since the first track. It was full of energy and a soulful riffs. The keytar level was higher so I could actually hear it. Too little too late though and I was just glad it was over. The crowd were going mental - clearly not everyone shared by opinion. And then there was a brain cleansing silence and the hum of general chit chat as the decks were reinstated for Ruskin.

The votes are in

During this short interlude we wandered to the back to catch up with the rest of the crew and I took a general opinion pole... EVD had her own party in her headphones. Hilda said the relentlessness of the sax actually made her feel a bit sick after a while. GLM said too much jazz and even gave me the jazz hands. The general consensus was that it had not been "the one" we were after. TIR called us heathens, he loves culture and appreciates the history and said we can't possibly have not enjoyed it if we were true techno fans. Well sorry mate but you were hearing what you wanted to hear. Everyone has a bad day, everyone misses a sound check and sometimes even your heroes are just under par. Respect for all they stand for and have brought to the world of Techno but that does not automatically make what just happened any good. You may not believe this but I actually used to manage a jazz band. I've spent a fair amount of time at various London jazz clubs and seen some of the best in the biz in the world of funk and soul. I feel qualified to have an opinion. The best bit was just seeing so many fans old and new gathered from all over the country to pledge their allegiance. I'm glad some of them felt it was worth the trip.

I have never been so pleased to see James Ruskin. The man had one hell of a task on his hands following

James Ruskin

that vibe and he handled it well. The strobes kicked in and so did some much needed tougher, funkier beats. Hands were in the air across the room, everyone shuffling about harder than before. I survey the room from the mezzanine and wonder when it was in club history that people stopped dancing. Was it something to do with a change in drugs? With not wanting to look stupid? With over crowded dance floors maybe? Once upon a time everyone used to bust some proper moves. Two feet came up of the floor, hips swirled and people showed some personality. They didn't just stare at the DJ and shuffle from side to side with their arms just randomly wafting about. Luckily at that precise second Ash appeared and my faith in clubbers returned as he was legs akimbo, arms punching the air, giving the floor a proper seeing to.

Ruskin continued to rock the old school house vibe and move on into his regular energetic pounding techno. Slowly my general enthusiasm and energy levels are returning and I too feel like dancing around. It's now 5am and we must make it through to Jeff Mills. 5hrs to go. It's weird how some nights go past in a flash, but having not been thrilled with all the music and not having sat down for 8 hrs by now, I was struggling. There are many times we've been clubbing for much longer stretches but those clubs had chairs for the odd rest! Determined to enjoy myself I soaked up the high tempo lights and their greens and purples alongside some great serene nature themed screen visuals.  

I spotted Jeff mills soaking it up from the sound booth. Acid synths and bassy vocals, fire cracker rhythms, loads of 303. Technotastic. TIR being his usual jammy self went to say hi to Jeff, who gave him a drinks voucher and had a nice chat. TIR can't drink but couldn't turn down a bevvy from Mr. Mills so we all helped him out with his havana rum on ice. YUM. 

Ruskin's set gets harder as it goes on. I am zapped. Tired. Hot. Sweaty. Need a shower. As the set ends I am just getting tetchy and irritable. Am on the verge of turning into moody troll and ruining everyone's vibe so I carried myself off to sort my contact lenses out and sit down for 5mins on the sofa in the loos.

The names Mills... Jeff Mills

Jeff Mills can famously be a bit hit and miss. Train crashing through some sets and total unadulterated genius through others. I was in no mood for any more let downs so ventured back out into the bar hoping for the kind of experience I had at The Lighthouse watching him play a live soundtrack to Space Odyssey 2001 being screened on the warehouse wall at Lost. I was not disappointed.

After a short experimental intro Jeff slammed away. Very much a danceable set. I was elated, I was relieved and after half pint of Pepsi I was raring to go. Metallic harpsichord downwards sliding scales cascaded over and over. Chugging bass and odd glockenspiel notes like heavy rain drops plopping on a puddle filled my ears. All I could see were mates dancing (to varying degrees depending on the elderliness of their knees).

Bets were put on as to when The Bells would drop. Following a course of dream sequence style riffs and a horrid sustained high pitched drone - like both flat and sharp piano keys being slammed down for fucking ages I was going mental. Too tired to bear it. But as with last the screech ended, doused by a floaty melodic flourish and new beat, which built up and carried me to awakness as The Bells came in 68mins into the set. EVD and GML had just said their Goodbyes but 30 seconds into the Bells they ran over to us. They had almost made it out the doors before hearing The Bells and rushing back in. Even better - The 909 came out in full effect for a little jam session. It gave me wings. Achy legs said Bye Bye. I LOVE LOVE LOVED IT.

I do like to watch this man at work. He is always so poised and focused. He's like a swan, gliding delicately across the water as its legs do mental flapping away underneath. From the chest up Mills is serene but his hands are a blur as he is busy tweaking and perfecting the set.

Sad to say that we didn't make it to the end. We left 30mins before it was all over. Beaten by tiredness and the wish to get ahead of the crowd for the cloakroom and tube.

A mixed bag over all with some definite highlights, bu the flow and set order was all wrong and UR's lack of sound check and over indulgent sax meant what should have been the best techno night ever, was merely an OK night out. 

Blueprint @ Cable Sat 15th Feb 2013

It was a tough old week in the lead up to Blueprint.

We lost a dear friend who died previous weekend and will be sorely missed by all who knew him – RIP David Hills, AKA Dave Saunders. I can’t claim to have known Dave well at all having only spent one evening and some light hearted facebook chat in his company, but others in our techno posse have been friends with Dave for many years – run club nights with him, partied with him and been his close friend through thick and thin. Never a sad face or a dull moment in Dave’s company and his FB wall alone is testament to the amazing life he led and the huge number of gobsmacked people who are stunned and saddened by his death.