Fabric Details...

Fabric, 77a Charterhouse Street, Clerkenwell, London, EC1M 3HN. UK 

Fabric has its main UK Club base in London where some of the best progressive house & breakbeat in the country can be heard. The club also has its own lable where it has produced several Fabric Live albums. Fabric does not yet have its own festival.

 Fabric Club Night Review...

It was shortly after 10:30 when we arrived in the Farringdon area of London , which just happens to be where my two favourite clubs are: Turnmills and Fabric. Tonight we are off to Fabric, to see the one and only Sasha.

Even at this hour, the customary Fabric queue was already in place, you know the one, down the road, round the corner and growing longer by the minute? Lucky we were on the guestlist! (He, He).

Warming up for Sasha in room 1 from 10-2, was Paolo Mojo, and up and coming star from the UK. Yet another DJ playing only CDs, Mojo treated an already packed dancefloor to a magnificent display, encompassing house, funk, techno, breaks, electro and acid, plus probably a few more that I've forgotten!

While awaiting Sasha, we spent some time in the less busy room 2, which we also thought was quite superb. Terry Francis was ripping it up with some driving tech house, to the backdrop of a bamboozling green laser that I wanted to take home with me! Oh, I really loved that laser.

As 2 o'clock approached, it seemed like the whole club had migrated to room 1. It was an unusual looking DJ booth, with only one redundant turntable, several Pioneer CDJs, and a massive 17" screen with Sasha's laptop. There was also another unusual piece of equipment that was Sasha's specially made controller, enabling him to DJ with his laptop. This is a glimpse into the future of DJing (or the present if you are Sasha!), as his whole set was delivered using only his laptop via a programme called Ableton Live. No vinyl, no CDs, just a laptop! I wonder when he last used a piece of vinyl?

For those who don't know about Ableton Live, it's a piece of software that's been around for a while now, used mainly by producers. It is unique as you can load a track into it of a certain BPM, then load in another track of a totally different BPM, and Bingo, they will automatically play perfectly at the same speed! There is a bit of preparation required beforehand, but you can see where this is leading? For a DJ beatmatching is a thing of the past, the beats will never go out of time, and you hardly even need your headphones!

For many this is not DJing as it should be, and it is not visually appealing. On the other hand, it opens up new avenues for DJs and allows them to be really creative. The DJ can simply forget about monitoring the beats, and for example, concentrate solely on adding effects or cutting up tunes and re-editing them there and then, which was what Sasha was doing.

The end result is a flawless creative set that can only make the night even more enjoyable for the clubbers.

Sasha's set was excellent to say the least, opening with his own special intro, as heard on his Radio 1 Essential Mix broadcast that same night, and dropping tunes such as his own Wavy Gravy, and the Gorillaz latest offering.

As mentioned above, I don't think I've ever seen a room so busy in my life, and to say that it was too busy would be a huge understatement, once you were on the dancefloor you weren't getting off in a hurry!

The sound at Fabric is spot on. It doesn't seem that loud, but it is, I'm told it can be cranked up to 123 db, which is almost the equivalent of an aeroplane taking off, but you were still able to talk to people without too much of a problem. At 5 am, the sound man Sanj, decided to give it a "little" tweak, and the resulting bass coming out of the panels in the floor rippled right through your body! Very nice.

There is also a third room upstairs that I haven't mentioned, and some nice little areas for chilling out.

Overall, the Fabric experience is quite special, in a different league from most clubs, hence the ridiculous queues! However, it is worth the wait, and you should definitely go sometime.