- No one knew it at the time, but Floating Points' third You're A Melody party would be one of the last ever nights at Plastic People. The club's surprise closure last week brought an abrupt end to one of London's most storied and influential nightspots. On the right night, Plastic People was the best club in the world: that pitch-black dance floor and all-enveloping sound system made it one of the most immersive, inspiring and downright irresistible club environments I've ever experienced. Unlike most other clubs in the city, it was defined by its consistent musical ideology and very real sense of community.
The first You're A Melody was a straightforward proposition. It saw Floating Points, Jeremy Underground Paris and Red Greg play lovingly selected soul records from start to finish. But it was the recording of the event that really caught the imagination. Voted the eighth best mix of 2013 by RA staff, it introduced a relatively young audience to the kind of deep disco, soul and funk that's usually the preserve of middle-aged record collectors. As such, the party's third edition came with an air of anticipation. Pre-sale tickets had sold out and at 9 PM there was a queue 70-people deep before the doors had even opened. That's a remarkable state of affairs for what is essentially a rare groove night.
Behind the decks, Red Greg returned alongside Floating Points for another all-night back-to-back session. Red Greg isn't a name familiar to most, but he has a cult following among disco aficionados. In fact, he helped Floating Points track down the record that inspired You're A Melody—a horribly expensive single by super-obscure funksters Aged In Harmony. Predictably, both DJs played excellent music. A few of the stand out tracks included Don Blackman's "You'll Never Miss A Thing," The Warriors' "Destination" and Mary Clarke's "Take Me I'm Yours." Almost every record was new to me and most of the crowd, the result of Floating Points and Red Greg's obsessive dedication to digging.
The sound system at Plastic People was the club's most famous feature. That night, it was even better than usual. The records were played using EMT broadcast turntables—hulking, 30-year-old pieces of German equipment that lead the line in sound quality and are near impossible to mix on—and Floating Points' hand-made, high-spec mixer. The result was, for want of a better expression, music that sounded more alive than I'd ever heard in a club. When certain tracks were EQ'd in specific ways, the entire feeling of the song changed. Soul records became house tracks; jazz funk morphed into synth-driven techno.
As nerdy as that sounds, it's important to note that the party wasn't an audiophile geek-out. The majority of the crowd had come to Plastic People with the firm intention of dancing—the screams and cheers at the end of each record made that much clear. In my opinion, this has always been the secret to Plastic People's appeal: its owners and main DJs may have all been massive music nerds, but it was their eye for detail that made for the perfect party setting.
Plastic People will be sorely missed. One can only hope the club will eventually be resurrected in a new location, like when they moved from Oxford Street in 2000 (though that seems unlikely given the current problems ailing London's club scene). As for You're A Melody, it was in its own way a classic Plastic People night, which makes the club's closure all the harder to stomach.