On a fleeting return visit to London last week I managed to squeeze in a trip to XOYO, the 800-capacity club tucked into an alley behind Old Street station.
When nearby Herbal club closed in 2009 I was bereft, but this venue has filled that hole well. With a team including my ex Mixmag colleague and Bugged Out! founder John Burgess at the helm, you'd expect them to spot a good lineup from ten paces. Which they can.
Toddla T was playing - regular readers will know I'd never slate him. But the other DJs did a wicked job too, mixing up dubstep, garage, funky, jungle, and all other urban loveliness, into a bumpin' room with a great vibe. Rinse FM DJ Oneman took it a little too RnB but we forgive him for that because he also dropped LL Cool J's 'Doin It'. (Remember that one, kids? No?)
Anyway, the point of all this waffle is that XOYO is a fantastic club and you should all support it (and try to convince the council to let it open past 4am). So get your high tops on and jog down to Soundcrash on Saturday 20 August or the Urban Nerds Carnival Special the week after. Look!
On Saturday night I toddled down to Kentish Town Forum for Soundcrash, a 3D audiovisual extravaganza which essentially was, to my delight, a comedy dance music night.
Soundcrash is behind a whole range of hip hop/dubstep/anything-goes events ranging from the Trojan Sound System party at Koko last week (I'll blog about that later) to the Soundwave Festival in Croatia this July (which looks wicked - check out www.soundwavecroatia.com). The promotion has only recently come on my radar but boy, it's a good'un.
All the DJs at this gig were performing an AV mashup on the big screens that were hoisted up around the venue, so they get maximum respect for the amount of effort - and YouTube hours - that must have gone into getting a set together.
The party kicked off with Solid Steel's DJ Cheeba, who gets my top marks for the night. Cheeba smashed it, mixing and scratching everything from jungle to dubstep to Flight of the Conchords. The most memorable part has to be this (literally) dope Alice in Wonderland remix...
Second best bit of Cheeba's set was when he played 'Akama' by Kaitain and Tom Central. I say that not just because the latter was my date for the night, but because it was a genuinely badass track. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Next up were the Addictive TV DJs, who looked like what I can only describe as the Three Stooges dancing on stage like my dad at a wedding. Unfortunately they took the joke a bit too far. Instead of striking that delicate balance of excellent music with a measured dose of humour, they went all out, culminating in a badly chosen track from Family Guy. The most excruciating fact was, they looked more excited than the punters. But let's not dwell.
DJ Yoda came on next, doing what Yoda does best. He's famous for his well-crafted AV shows and this Magic Cinema Set, as he calls it, was no disappointment. It must be hard for a DJ to retain their credibility while playing a Tom Jones track to a serious dance-music crowd, but somehow Yoda managed to pull it off (give or take a few missed cues).
He dropped enough quality raving tunes to keep me skanking, but every now and then pulled some hilarity out of the bag, too. I never thought I'd see the day Lonely Island's 'I'm on a Boat' was played at a rave. If you haven't seen it yet, you're going to LOVE this:
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