- After discovering Wolf + Lamb in early 2009, I made it my mission along with a couple of other like-minded individuals to undertake a pilgrimage to the Marcy Hotel in Brooklyn to experience firsthand just what all the transatlantic fuss was about. We planned to fly from London to New York this March, but a day or so away from buying tickets, the party that we had planned to attend was cancelled.
We were heartened to see soon after, though, that Zev, Gadi, et al. decided to bring the Wolf + Lamb experience to London. The venue? The Red Gallery in London's Shoreditch, a townhouse masquerading as a music venue at least until it's torn down to make way for a new development in a couple of months. Raw to say the least, it seemed as if much of the venue had been blocked off to concentrate the action in a single basement room within which a small structure of scaffolding had been built, with a deep, red glow emanating from the words "This must be the place" in red neon behind it.
Photo credit: Rob Low
As we arrived, Zev was warming the pre-midnight crowd with slow, deep, sexy house, but before he'd spun three or four tunes (all vinyl; there was a lonely CDJ1000 perched on the edge of the mixing desk for the first hour or two before a sound guy realised it wasn't going to get much action and slung it in a dark corner somewhere) he made way for Deniz Kurtel. Switching between breaks and some fairly dark techno, her live set was a touch harder than I'd anticipated but she managed to pack the dance floor, her excellent remix of No Regular Play's "Owe Me" getting the reaction it deserved.
Next on were No Regular Play themselves, but first a word about the as-yet unmentioned Gadi; I didn't see a single person enjoying themselves as much as him the entire night. Whether he was dropping disco and soul tracks like a musical compare between other sets, dancing and clapping to his own selections or jumping on fellow performers' backs, he was the absolute life and soul of the party. And why not? If you can't enjoy it, how do you expect other people to?
Indeed, the entire night had the feel of a house party...with exceptional DJs providing the entertainment rather than a few random mates. No Regular Play further fuelled the party fire with Greg Paulus adding his notable skills as a trumpet player to an upbeat and bouncy set; Playgroup's "Behind the Wheel" was a personal highlight from their hour or so at the Mac.
Photo credit: Rob Low
This was a night of pleasure and passion from all quarters; artists, punters, even the staff seemed to be on good form. It was testament to the inclusive and unpretentious nature of the event and accessibility of the music—something of a rarity in Shoreditch these days. Even when the extremely hot basement had reached the point of saturation and sweat literally started dripping off the roof and onto the mixer, no one seemed that fussed.
After a couple of seconds of fairly worrying crackling spitting out of the speakers someone simply grabbed an umbrella from behind the decks (a problem foreseen?), and strapped it to the desk. This would have been enough to send many a DJ into a hissy fit, but not so these guys. Unfussy, unworried, job done. Having never been the Marcy, I can't confirm whether this night replicated it exactly, but I'll be looking forward to the next time it happens in London, wherever it is.