Live

Scratch Perverts, Andy C, Sinden

Michael Annis 13/04/2007

In the age of the super club, there aren't many bigger than Fabric. With three floors, two thousand entrants every week and a name recognisable all over the UK, the club is presently one of the capital's most famous nightspots. This evening the club plays host to Fabric Live, their show-pony event, showcasing Europe's biggest dance acts on a regular basis, bringing in punters from as far a field as Glasgow. What's more, the club is so good at pulling in the DJs and public that they can put this show on not annually or monthly, but every week.


The music in rooms 1 and 2 is predictably high-octane, blood pumping drum and bass, dance and hip hop. It serves its markets perfectly, from the wide boys on Stella, to the girls in short skirts on vodka and cokes, to the wide-eyed ravers on…err…bottled water amongst other things. The public would accept nothing else and the DJs certainly do not make any apologies for not dropping any obscure Smiths tracks, but within the genres they cover they do offer a certain amount of variation.

Highlight of the evening was the Scratch Perverts with Dynamite MC; with the Perverts (can I call them that? Hmm) sounding like fresh young debutants keen to make an impression on their first big break, despite the fact that they were old hands playing this club for the umpteenth time. Room 1 Headliner Andy C's set sounded a little disappointing in comparison, and in his hour long stint here he was obviously a little rushed. This is always the case with Andy, give him four hours and he can do wonders, but in a short set it seems as though he makes too much of an attempt to keep the tempo going by chopping and changing things frequently, meaning his set lacks any continuity, and is all the poorer for it.


Room 3 was given the moniker “cool and deadly”, and, of the four acts available none lived up to this better than Sinden, whose dancehall set offered what was, musically, this reviewers' highlight of the night.


But has Fabric become a victim of its own success? Punters outside were waiting an hour just to get in, and room 2 especially was more crowded than a mini cooper with a rugby team inside The club has no communal atmosphere, Fabric is a cash cow for its owners, but there are times that the common punter can feel like cattle being herded into a massive pen.

But the people who come here do so in spite of all this, as they know that this is just a feature of clubbing in central London. They know that as far as the music is concerned, Fabric is one of only a handful of clubs that can deliver the biggest names in dance and D&B every week.