Flippin’ ‘eck.

Be careful what you wish for… after several years of moaning about always dj-ing the 1st slot when nobody is around, I got brought up sharp by the prospect of a 4am appearance this time!

Certain associates of mine felt that this would be a tough task, forgetting my veteran years of raving, and more importantly 2 years worth of near total sleep deprivation because of fatherhood.

The venue was a squatted (?) ex-pub in Hackney Wick. Proper top organisation in the place, nice attention to detail. Venue and promoters clearly knew the score.

I turned up to the sounds of Oneman’s savage bass workouts. People were going mental and it was only about midnight or so.

Boomnoise

Boomnoise followed with a surprisingly versatile set of funk bizness which had the laydeez dancing as well as people like myself who wished to escape from the d**step in the main room. I wasn’t wild about the tinny 80s end of what he was playing but he moved away from that into an impressively diverse selection incorporating 60s, 70s and even some 80s post-punk stuff. Big!

Vibes were good and I even found myself enjoying parts of the sets by Anti-Social, Downshifter and Slaughter Mob in the main room. It was even possible to have the odd conversation above the woohm woohm woohm now and again and I caught up with a couple of BASH soldiers, including Mr Le Bug who has a couple of awesome singles in the pipeline (coming Sept and Oct)…

As 4am approached, the small room was awash with mentalists dancing to ‘ardkore and the like. This was followed by Benga and Chef doing a back to back set of their latest dubplates. Even a dubstep sceptic like me has a lot of time for these two and quite frankly following them would be no easy gig. Some of Benga’s new tunes are OUTRAGEOUS.

I went on shortly after 5am and did good. It’s always disconcerting to be flipping through your records to find the next tune and hear the music stop dead. But when you look over your shoulder and see that someone has leant over the booth to press “stop” and lots of people are smiling and sticking their hands in the air… well, that panic dissolves pretty quickly, heh heh. I kicked off with some harder ragga stuff and then moved into 80s dancehall and was about to get into a 21st century roots thing when the evening came to an end.

Outside, people were milling about with the unmistakable air of a massive which has had a righteously good time.

The 276 got me home in time to witness the rest of my household waking up. They told me in no uncertain terms that I needed a bath, which is where I woke up shortly afterwards.