Payback, last Thursday, was great. Really good turnout (DB and Jason Jinx must be well chuffed), really good vibe, really good music on a really good system (didn't realise til I got there that Avalon, the venue, used to be the Limelight). DB played a fine set (kicking off, sweetly, with "I Need Your Lovin'"); "special guest" hardcore legend from back-in-the-day DJ Dan was excellent; Dave Ralph a bit progressive house in the original 93 meaning of the term, but he did play Nitro Deluxe 'This Brutal House". Best of all, and one of the most exciting sets I've ever witnessed, was Dara and AK 1200 spinning together in the second room. Period-wise the set was pitched just six months to a year on from where DB/Dan were situated--late '92, the E frenzy getting really manic. Squeaky voices. What they used to call Jungle Tekno: that point when the ragga samples started coming in big time--"ya bad man", "jump up bwoy". And the boys were jumping (some were actually moshing, a bit too rowdy). But so were the girls. The room was packed with them. A couple of them, weirdly, had got this slightly hardbitten, hair-tightly-pulled-back, raver girl look about them that was so period-perfect (totally accidentally, I'm sure), they could almost have been beamed in via time capsule from the Labrynth circa '92. They were
doing this writhy, almost-kinda-sinister dancing. It was mental in there, telling ya. It hurt me how many tunes I a/ i recognised from the time but didn't know or have B/ how many i didn't recognise. An endless goldmine, that era. Gradually the music inched forward through time, going into jungle proper (it was amazing how the sonics improved, the drums got cleaner and fatter, reminding you how cruddy the production values of most hardcore were) then suddenly surging right through classics like "Rinse Out" and into the latter days of jump up (when the music lost me, simultaneous with my strength failing). Danced so hard, for a couple of days afterwards my limbs ached. Big up to all involved in throwing and attending the event. Big Shout to raving cru Geeta and Andy B, shouts also to Craig Willingham aka I-Sound and his mate Dave.