THE BIG CHILL SOUNDSYSTEM AT THE END
February 23rd, 2005 by rui
Big Chill Sound System at The End. Something doesn’t read right. Chew the Fat are doing a breakbeat night at The End and BCSS are doing the Lounge. Sounds like chalk and cheese. So when I walk in on Yam’s DJ set and find the floor full of girls grooving to his funky African flavoured sounds I know my expectations are about to be confounded.
Following Yam’s hour of solid grooves Pete takes to the decks and, with the lighting in there, The Lounge becomes reminiscent of The Union Chapel back in the day. I don’t mean the times when everyone was lying on beanbags on the floor, I mean the times like when Higher Intelligence Agency had the whole place dancing. A passing hippy (!) gives Pete the thumbs up for playing an old YamYam track.
I poke my head in on the Drummatic Twins in the main room. I have a soft spot for their track The Return of Twisted Desire and the dancefloor is a scene of similar mutated intense menace. A passerby says to me "they’re ‘avin’ it" – they are. Loud and mental.
The sound system in The End is great and AGK play an electro set of some diversity. Mixing tough minimalist tunes such as Rex the Dog’s remix of Depeche Mode with old Paul Hardcastle b’sides and other surprises. Keeping the Lounge danceable keeps it full, but that doesn’t stop the lone trainspotter wandering over to find out what the record is and putting it in his phone before being dragged away by his jumping girlfriend. Yam dropped Bahama Mama and Pete dropped Musical Box, so AGK drop Eastern Logic…
Bruce feeds off the electro vibe by starting off with 808 State. Sounds awesome. He goes on to play a, by Bruce standards, very banging set. And pulls it off!
Leggo Beast’s Murray Clark is next to pick up the baton, dropping his usual eclectic and funky business. Malcom McLaren’s ‘Double Dutch’ kicks off an improntu double-rope skipping session on the dancefloor, albeit with invisible skipping ropes. And LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Losing my edge’ gets at least one dancer shouting ‘I LOVE THIS TRACK’.
Lol Hammond wrapped things up in his inimitable style – kicking off with ‘Groove is in the heart’ and running the room until the end of this entertaining night at The End.
Without a doubt, an unusual venue for The Big Chill Soundsystem. Sound levels from the main room meant that gentler, mellower, beatless music couldn’t really work. The fact that all the DJs rose to the challenge and rocked it just goes to show that the artists on Big Chill Recordings, as both recording artists and DJs, are impossible to pigeonhole anywhere other than the box marked ‘Quality’.
