I was flipping through the krautrock section at Phonica the other day, keeping up appearances, when I made a discovery that would change me forever - in fact change my whole weekend plan essentially. After four years of nodding casually at the guy who works there, we had eventually built up a flimsy rapport and on some occasions he would tip me off about gigs that techno enthusiasts simply had to be at. This was one of those occasions and it went thusly…
“Hey,” said the Phonica dude. “There's going to be an epic gig this weekend dude, you should be there.” I asked who was playing but he told me it was a secret. Then I asked where it was but that was a secret too. He seemed unwilling or unable to tell me more so we signposted the end of our conversation with a head jerk and I left the store with many unanswered questions.
The whole thing was shrouded in a veil of mystery and it got me really excited and willing to spend money. It felt cool to be involved in such an elite group of people who knew about this secret gig. Then I realised I didn't know anything about it, so I went to the place I go when I need answers about the weekend, which is Resident Advisor. The good thing about Resident Advisor is that you don't have to be scared about accidentally running into a wide variety of music styles because you won't. It's also good because if a reviewer tells you something you already know you can comment below the article that you already knew that and if they say something is really good you can remind them that it's actually overrated.
So I went to Resident Advisor and searched “secret London location techno party” and my computer panicked and exploded into a million tiny pieces. This was confusing because I was pretty sure this party was unique, so the crash must have been caused by something else. I was downloading Kraftwerk's complete discography in WAV format at the time so it could have been that. After switching to a different apple device and trolling my way through some forums I eventually found the event I was looking for. The party was to be held in a Secret East London Warehouse Location!!! “So the plot thickens…” I whispered aloud, narrowing my eyes at my iPhone screen. This was not completely welcome news because I had recently read an article on Vice that told me Dalston was dead so I abandoned my east London converted warehouse apartment and moved to Peckham because apparently that was the new Dalston. Having arrived in Peckham I realised I might have been a little pre-emptive because it's still quite shit. The good thing is it's a quarter of the price of east London so I've had more disposable income to spend on broken synthesizers and equine tranqs.
Saturday night rolled around and the secret location was announced over not-so-secret social media. I headed east and joined the throngs of young people following their smart-phones blindly across roads and into dark alleyways in search of their chosen party. I joined the queue in the relevant postcode asked around if anyone knew who the DJ was. Someone said he had done a Boiler Room and we were like “hmmmm.” I was reasonably convinced then that he must be good, but some were still twisting their fingers around their mustaches and quite skeptical. Then someone said they had seen him at Panorama Bar too and everyone was like “ohhhh” and there were no more doubts. The good thing about Boiler Room TV is you can watch some people behind the DJ really appreciating the music and life in general. Sometimes they rest their drink on the table and look over the DJ's shoulder to check he's doing it right, which is quite considerate. It's also thrilling to see the top of DJs heads whilst they work.
This night was so exclusive that everyone had to wait outside for a long time. At first I thought it might be like in Berlin where you never know if you're going to get in (I got in) but I discovered it was the opposite and they kept letting in anyone and everyone even after there was no more space to move. It was too busy to dance or walk around for a few hours so everybody stood right next to each other like stalks of asparagus and looked over each other's heads a lot and shazamed most tracks they heard. By 4am the crowd had thinned a tiny bit and I took the opportunity to walk around and check out the venue. I had paid 17.50 to be here which I thought was quite reasonable considering the effort gone into making the space authentically warehouse-like. There weren't proper toilets, the cloakroom was an unguarded corridor and the bar only served cans of red stripe or straight rum. The sound was poorly balanced and everything was covered in dirt and grime. All in all it was made to look exactly like an empty shed, which must have been quite expensive to pull off so the ticket price was justifiable.
The techno was banging so I joined in with everybody shifting his or her weight from one foot to the other. We put our hands in the air and made ugly faces when the DJ did something especially good like making the bass louder or looking up from his turntables. At one point he threw in a few ironic disco tunes which I'm aware is underground-appropriate these days so I began to dance in a more fruity style to match the music and this seemed to be acceptable to most. Presently I noticed the DJ had been playing disco for two hours now so I was reasonably certain it wasn't ironic, but it's hard to say for sure because some people were definitely still dancing ironically. It was now 6.30am and since nobody had invited me to a secret after party and a few people around me were foaming at the mouth I thought I might as well go home.
As I left a girl handed me a plastic bag which I assumed was a party lollybag and I got really excited that this was a thing again, but it turned out to just be flyers about other secret events which no longer held quite the same allure for me, squished unceremoniously together within the plastic like slivers of cheap, sweaty ham pretending to be steak. I had made myself hungry with meat related similes so stopped off for a breakfast kebab before bed – standard.