Difficult Fun @ Fabric

Kate Simko photograph from Mosaic Music

It’s been a few days now and I suppose Saturday night has sort of sunk in. I was going to write about it on Sunday evening, but I was still reeling a little bit despite having spent a glorious few hours judging the masses in Regent’s Park with G and E (I now know that checks and Mr. Lazy are SO in right now). Anyway, I wasn’t in a good enough state to write a blogpost about Fabric…but apparently I was in a good enough state to dash off a few e-mails to Cassy – saying thank you – and to Fabric themselves, saying….well, this is what the post is about I suppose. Safe to say it was a bit angry, and I’m afraid this post might be a bit angry too. There may be a lot of words in CAPITAL LETTERS. I’ll treat it as some form of therapy, the kind that’s intensely embarrassing for all concerned because the person in question publishes it all over the fucking internet.

Here’s what happened:

Entrance: We arrived at 1.30am and found our names on the guestlist (thanks to E’s amazing competition-winning skills). BUT, surprise #1, there was no guestlist as such because, I assume, it was meant to be a very quiet weekend, so there was no fun to be had having access to the special VIP toilets. Oh well. The crowd were pretty weird – I can’t explain it, but it felt even less welcoming than normal. I noticed throughout the night that I saw far fewer people than normal who seemed to be genuinely enjoying being in Fabric, as opposed to enjoying being on a night out totally wasted. And the percentage of girls with ridiculously huge bags was way higher than usual – it’s NOT ON.

Cloakroom: Having deposited most of our stuff in the cloakroom, we looked at the line-up to see when Cassy was on and…spent a long while shocked and angry that Cassy was only on for two hours from 3-5am, clashing with Kate Simko live 3-4am. I was very angry. Bringing a Panoramabar resident over to London to play for just 2 hours seemed to be a complete joke…especially since Craig Richards was on the bill for 3 hours afterwards! He plays there every weekend! I was EXTREMELY angry.

Room 3: We went to see Larry Heard in Room 3 in the pursuit of ‘calm-down’ vibes. It turns out though that by this point I was angry enough to actually feel cheated that he was playing CDs rather than vinyl. Is it unreasonable to want one of the greatest house legends there is to play a few records rather than not even looking like he’s DJing? I wanted him to be showing off his, you know, FINGERS! Also the first actual mix I heard was dreadful…so off to Room 1. Sorry Larry, i’ll still listen obsessively to ‘Never No More Lonely’.

Room 1 (part 1): In Room 1 we caught the very end of Jus-Ed’s set and then briefly met him on the dancefloor as Cabanne started up his liveset. Jus-Ed seemed like THE COOLEST guy ever, coming out on to the dancefloor to say hi, give out CDs, ask how we were doing. Totally refreshing and on the basis of that I’m definitely going to try and catch a full set from him next time he’s in town. Cabanne was putting the Room 1 soundsystem through its paces and it was sounding mighty fine – it always sounds great around 2-3am…more on that later. His set was quite frothy but in a really good way – he had this weird mixture of hench-but-girly going on with his floppy hair and flowery lighting. I really enjoyed hearing all those microsamples popping out of the speakers. We quit early, though, to get a good spot for Kate Simko in Room 2.

Room 1 (back of DJ booth): But not before I’d decided to totally work out my anger by trying to actually TALK to Cassy and ask her if she was really only playing for two hours. It’s a mark of how much I was worked up about it that I decided the only way to sort things out was to demand to talk to, uh, one of the best DJs in the world. I should really not try and converse with my idols, it’s impossible, the words come out all wrong. I’m pretty sure ‘We love you!’ cropped up pretty early on in the conversation. It’s true. On the topic of her set time, she said that was just the way it was. I think at that moment I made a promise to myself (and her!) to just fucking go for it and go to Berlin in the spring and see her play at a venue that gives her the time she deserves (i.e. Panoramabar). I am going to hold myself to that one. On the way out of Room 1 I think my knees gave way and I had to lean on G for support…I was just completely starstruck.

Room 2 (part 1): Mike Shannon was playing some MENTAL tracks in Room 2, including I think a couple of tracks from his Memory Tree release, which I’ve since bought on vinyl. It’s so pretty and it sounds amazing, I recommend it. As he was finishing, Kate Simko had set up on the stage and was ready to start. We were right down the front to get the best view, but as soon as she started we realised the sound was way too loud there so we moved right to the back instead. The crowd was all a bit pushy and there were an incredible number of idiots whistling. But it was Kate Simko so I was enjoying myself immensely – she’s one of the best producers around at the moment. Her set had loads of new material and it was all groovy as hell – some innovative dancing was going on…and when she slowly wove in ‘She Said’ the whole mood changed and Room 2 suddenly became SEXY and like a DISCO (as opposed to the brash, macho loser I normally think of it as).

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Room 2 (part 2) – horrible interlude: G had her phone stolen out of her bag as she was dancing with eyes closed. There’s nothing Fabric can do about this and there’s no way of getting it back. How shit. Kind of makes you wonder if you are actually allowed to have any FUN these days without some wanker ruining it. Later, on the walk home, we speculated about whether the thief was also a techno fan and was living out a techno-thieving dream by stealing phones in Fabric. ‘Hey, I can steal shit AND listen to my favourite music, all at the same time!’ Eurgh.

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Room 1 (part 2): We bolted back to Room 1 after Kate Simko in order to catch as much of Cassy’s set as possible. We lasted 10 minutes before realising that it was TOO FUCKING LOUD. Seriously, if you have one of the best soundsystems in the world, why do you need to put it on so loud? Why do you need to deafen the very people who want to just fucking ENJOY your music rather than have their ears irreparably DAMAGED by it?! It was sounding great for Cabanne at 2am, so why fuck it up at 4am just because you feel you HAVE to turn it up to keep people on the floor? I remember exactly the same thing happening at the Âme night, when whoever’s in charge of these things turned it up as Âme came on and the music immediately becoming unbearable to listen to. If you have it on that loud, all the high end gets muscled out by the bass, you lose the whole point of having such a warm and loving soundsystem and you end up sounding like every other shitty club that thinks the only mark of a good night is if everyone there can’t hear anything for a day afterwards. I seriously need to get some high-end earplugs or I’m just going to have to stop going out. I do NOT want my ears to get fucked up!

Balcony: So we escaped to the balcony where we thought it would be better. Sure, it was quieter, but for some reason they didn’t seem to have the same sound up there as they normally do. I swear the other two times I’ve been lucky enough to be up there that they’ve had separate speakers, but this time it was just whatever made it up from the main floor. Still, it was better than being deaf and we managed to dance a bit to the end of Cassy’s set. She was playing some immense tracks which made me even angrier that she was only on for 2 hours.

Leaving: By all accounts Craig Richards played a great set. I didn’t hear it because I just wanted to get out of there by that point. I’m sure I had some fun that night, but it was really motherfucking DIFFICULT fun, the kind of fun you feel like you’ve really worked hard for, and it may not have totally paid you back.

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I know that the circumstances that made Saturday night so difficult were unpredictable, some unavoidable, some probably a state of mind on my part. But surely it shouldn’t be that difficult to have fun, surely there are ways of making it more likely that the fun will come easily and without caveats. I tried to talk to a couple of staff members who were hanging around near Room 1 at about 5am. I thought they might be sound guys – they said they weren’t, but they wanted to know what I wanted to say. I told them I thought it was too loud and that there was no point in it being that loud. One of them said: “Have you taken any drugs tonight? It might help if you did.”

What do you say to that? How can you convey the sudden feeling of hopelessness prompted by advice like that coming from an employee of the club you love?

Similarly, the guy in the toilets who told me (completely untruthfully) I couldn’t use a cubicle because he’d “seen me there before, and you can’t use them more than twice.”

What can you possibly say, other than ‘what the fuck?!’?

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I’m going back to Fabric to see Ricardo in November, but other than that I’m finding it more and more difficult to justify the trip. I feel awful because only a couple of months ago I was aghast at all the people saying they hated the place. But it only takes a few bad experiences for something to lose its sheen and, in the face of genuinely enjoyable parties that are happening elsewhere, Fabric suddenly seems like a hell of a lot of hard work for very little reward.

I’m fully expecting to have a far better time seeing Shed and Bodycode play at the Faktion night in Manchester on the 7th November. When I went to the School Of Sound Recording last time to see Marcel Dettmann I found that not only does it have an amazing soundsystem (that wasn’t overdriven at any point), it also managed to have no people whistling all the time, or carrying huge bags, or wearing stupid sunglasses, or stopping me from using the toilet, or telling me to take drugs to distract from my ears hurting. Just people out to enjoy the music they like and to dance with their eyes closed without being deafened or having their phones stolen.