Who ever said London's trendy Shoreditch was all glitter and no substance? Kate Hutchinson begs to differ as she discovers a new form of blackout clubbing where there's not enough light for posturing and it's all about the music...
On a hot summer’s night in Shoreditch, you’ll still find throngs of writhing clubbers packing into basement dance music venue, Plastic People, on a Friday and Saturday night. It’s the area’s most celebrated nightclub, not just for its quality electronic music programming, but also for its winning multi-sensory formula of sound and vision.
Or lack of it, rather. While Plastic People’s crystalline Funktion One soundsystem pumps out new beats, revellers are stripped of their other senses: you must totally surrender to the pitch black dancefloor and trust in the music that fills it. It forces you to focus solely on the music - not on who is about to tip a beer over you - and let your primal moving instincts take over.
It’s a concept that has found fans in Late Of The Pier. The psych-electro outfit’s synthman Sam Potter, along with well-known indie promoters Eat Your Own Ears, curated the first of a new series of music events last night in east London: Blackout. The clue is in the name, but the audience listened to a line-up of anonymous artists while submerged in utter darkness and were encouraged to completely 'focus on the subtleties of sound’. Synaesthesia for the hipster generation, if you will.
The gig took place in The Apiary on Hackney Road, a new gallery and events space with a taste for the radical and experimental, and will repeat with a new line-up on June 16. “We chose the space because it wasn't a typical gig venue and we wanted to create a different environment to listen to music in,” explained Potter. “Part of the idea was to let people listen to music with a different mindset and having it in a place people might not have been before will hopefully encourage that. Music itself is constantly moving so we need to reflect this in the way we present it.”
But it’s also a unique experience for the acts playing. They’re not announced, which gives them, it says here, 'an opportunity to perform and experiment free from expectations and preconceptions’. “The artists’ performance will be made of nothing but sound, so we're going to hear what they really want to do musically,” said Potter. “And, because of their anonymity, they're going to dare to try new things that they might usually save for themselves. To make the most of the space and the concept, the two artists created bespoke shows, so the audience heard something exclusive to the night, it might have even be their favourite band playing music that may never see light of day.” Let’s hope that they could see their instruments, then.
The Apiary is extending this concept to clubbing too, dubbing the ‘Peek-A-Boo’ nights. The next is on May 20, which sees the launch of Lost Disco, from Club Cool, led by psychedelic disco collective The Coolness. Dedicated to ‘visual impairment’, it will feature a dancefloor submerged in fog, while room two will create a labyrinth using YouTube video projections to get lost in. So, keep your friends close and the people you fancy copping off with closer.
SBTRKT
SBTRKT
TRACK OF THE WEEK
SBTRKT – Wildfire
Here at Blog on the Dancefloor, we like a good producer in a mask. And no one does it better than SBTRKT, a former broken-beat producer who keep his identity shrouded in mystery thanks his voodoo hoodoo. Ahead of the release of his debut album on label-that-can-do-no wrong, Young Turks, on June 27, he has blended together this slo-mo yet intricate dubstep groove with vocals from long-time supporter, Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano. Watch out: his music is gonna spread like, er, wildfire…
Listen to SBTRKT’s show for Red Bull Music Academy Radio.
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