From: barticle@hotmail.comDELETETHISBIT (Bart)
Newsgroups: uk.music.rave
Subject: multi-munt memories [part 2, labyrinth]
Date: 30 Sep 1997 14:54:26 GMT
Organization: Accelerator Sound System


okay, now where was i? yeah, brixton after afterparty...

the inter-munt (or intra-munt, depending upon your preferred definition) 
period on saturday was spent in the most gracious company of smiley pete who 
very kindly invited me back to his houseboat. in short this was a top place to 
chillout in lovely surroundings, with top tunes on the stereo, a most 
hospitable host and i even had a chance to get some sleep too. as the "guinea 
pig" for going back there i can heartily recommend it for future visits, esp 
come next summer with the possibilty of premunt barbecues, i am told. thanks 
for having me aboard, captain pete. :)

come evening, carbo-loaded with toasted banana sandwiches and chips, leroy and 
i headed back to dalston. not to roseberrys, remember, it's called the 
labyrinth on saturday nights. this was very exciting for me. as many of you 
know/remember i've been talking about going to a happy hardcore club, like, 
forever. probably as long as a year. and now i'd finally decided that i could 
wait no longer. 

i arrived in dalston at about 22:30 thinking - "cool, i'm here early, i'll 
head upstairs and maybe get a little more kip in one of the comfy chairs". 
however, i get to the club and there's a huge queue already... running along 
the entire front length of the building it was, and two or three abreast! i 
guess these true raver types mean business.

i think i kinda stuck out in the queue. i mean, aside from being over 6 foot 
tall and being dashingly handsome. :) i think i looked odd cos i sported none 
of the following: adidas sportswear, logo'ed bomber jacket, collared shirt (in 
a few cases) or sensibly short hair. i guess there's a certain uniform when it 
comes to attending such functions as these. so i broke convention a little. 
good. :)

the queue moved fairly quickly, considering that everyone was being searched 
on their way in. this consisted of a bit of pocket-emptying, an hint of 
frisking (ooooh!) and an element of wallet inspection.

and so there i was - back inside roseber... the labyrinth, i mean. into the 
main room and it looked quite different to how it does normally. no fluoro 
market stalls and hardly any effects lights. however, they still had a goodly 
array of UV tubes and the place looked no less colourful than normal... the 
ravers who were already in there saw to that! pretty much everyone was wearing 
at least some white and/or fluoro clothing, glowy tops etc, white gloves were 
already in evidence, as were glo-stix (a couple of blokes had 4 glowy sticks 
each, that was quite impressive... until i later saw someone with 6 (six!) 
that's three in each hand! that's gotta be expensive! like i said, these ppl 
mean business).

i sat at the back of the room to survey the spectacle. although it was so 
early in the night already there were a good few ppl there and lots were 
dancing. and not just jiggling from side to side a bit, i mean -really- 
dancing. serious bouncing with maniacal arm and leg waving, with more than a 
little showmanship involved in some cases. as i sat there, watching them all - 
with the 170-180bpm tunes booming out of the speakers, and with ppl flailing 
and bouncing, waving white gloves very fast with gay abandon - i came over 
quite emotional remembering something that simon patten had said (on this very 
newsgroup many moons ago) about his first HH night. it seemed to apply to me 
too. i was HOME! :) :) 

you could see why HH albums end up with titles like 'bonkers' too. :) as well 
as those folks that had started dancing, some others were like chasing each 
other around the place and stuff. basically, ppl were having _fun_! 

unable to resist for too long, i soon shedded my hooded top to reveal my glowy 
star tee shirt, donned me gloves and took to the floor. it was great, truly 
great. :) there was plenty of room to move (just as well *grin*) and the 
musical was all at a _proper_ dancing tempo (170-180 like i said)! (cf. the HH 
thread months ago, i think that my body's "resonant tempo" is pretty fast) i 
felt incredibly... free - i think for a few reasons. it was like i wasn't 
constrained by the music, normally i could do with it being faster or harder 
in order to get off on it properly but that wasn't a problem here. also i 
wasn't constrained by the crowd, normally i wouldn't think of white-gloving it 
early on or dancing at full flail, but here it was the norm. *happy sigh*

the room filled out a little more until the downstairs was 'full' but still 
with ample room to move around. the crowd down here was like i said, 
distinctly a raver crowd. fluoro/white clothing etc as above, generally quite 
scantilly clad in the girl's cases (doh!). i guess that most ppl were quite 
young too. a lot of people seemed to know each other already (it's a weekly 
club, so maybe that contributes to that - ppl going every week) so there was 
much hugging and it felt quite friendly if maybe a little cliquey?

once there were more ppl moving and grooving the MC started up. fortunately i 
was now well briefed with what to expect here and i understood all the (many) 
references to "making noise" and "who wants a rewind?". however, this "noise" 
business took on a new dimension in a large room where many of the occupants 
are armed with whistles and horns! it actually wasn't annoying, it sort of 
'worked', as long as you weren't stood right next to someone who had the horn, 
holding it firmly in his hand, giving it a good blow (fnarr!!).

the 'anthems' effect was quite visible again too. i've only got a few HH mix 
cd's but again i recognised quite a few of the tunes. and a good proportion of 
the crowd _really_ recognised them, most of them and knew them by heart. hence 
a number of rewinds were required. :)

the music was obviously happy hardcore (duh), much of it of the variety that 
has cheezy vocal lines, often a revamped 80's pop synth line, that sorta 
thing. all nicely silly. i was happy dancing to all of it, basically cos it 
was so fast and it usually had some wicked 'ravey' sounds going on too. the 
only problem that i had was that it did tend to break quite a lot, but i guess 
it was beneficial to have a little respite from time to time!

when i decided to take a break i headed upstairs to the drum and bass room. as 
with the previous night, there was good stuff playing. again with an MC (in 
both rooms, each deejay had a different MC) and the ones upstairs seemed even 
more enthusiastic than those in the HH room. i found a vacant comfy chair (i 
guess most folks were dancing) in the bit just outside the girl's toilets. had 
a brief chat with a couple of ppl from downstairs and they seemed like pretty 
nice, friendly types.

i soon headed back downstairs for another session though, longer this time. 
some of the music was really amazing - more full-on, building nrg trance type 
stuff. then later more conventional happy stuff. when i finally stopped for a 
rest again (at around 2am, after having danced hard for about a coupla hours 
in total) i headed upstairs to the toilets and i found that i was more than a 
little soggy. a lot more. my teeshirt wasn't just damp, it was really clinging 
to me. the effect was indistinguishable from having removed the tee-shirt and 
held it under a warm tap for a few minutes! (i s'pose this was partly due to 
me, partly to the atmosphere down there)

my other tee shirt and hoody, both tied around my waist, were a little damp 
too so i decided to stop dancing then. seeing as all my clothes were wet and i 
was intending to walk back down to liverpool street afterwards, i decided to 
attempt to dry out (and give my poor legs a rest). i spent a while upstairs 
while kenny ken (a resident?) and swan-e were playing. then i spent the rest 
of the night (until 5am) sitting downstairs. i think the best example of the 
anthem effect and general silliness was evident downstairs towards the end 
when the deejay played the classic old skool rave tune "searchin for my rizla" 
by ratpack [spot (just one!)]. they faded the level down for the vocal rap bit 
and everyone sung along! yus, darn cheezy, but again fun! 

so my overall opinion: it was all quite a revelatory experience for me, as i 
knew it would be, i guess. it was totally cool. :) 

needless to say, the munterlion loved it!

and i guess i won't be having any more spare saturdays either! i'll be back at 
the labyrinth like a shot. :) (probably making a great personal exception and 
using the cloakroom) ...that's unless the bulldozers beat me to! :( if you've 
not heard, the labyrinth building (and hence roseberrys too for that matter!) 
is under threat of imminent demolition. :( still, they have one more night 
advertised on the current flyer. and then the week after that is a big one - 
their 9th birthday! (feat. slipmatt, sy, force + styles, seduction, vibes, 
jimmy j and spinback et al. in the HH room) then after that... well, the flyer 
says "if you don't see any more flyers for club labyrinth in dalston then it 
isn't because we didn't try"!!

and i've only just started going!! 

bit of a low note to finish on, but it really was a top fun weekend. :)

thank you for your kind attention,
          barticle
-- 
Bart, Ipswich, UK. barticle@hotmail.com or barticle@cyberspace.org
"...merely a series of sensory impulses which you now realise have
no real definite connection with outside reality."  Dark Star 1973