Bristol In:Motion: Subloaded 6th Birthday

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  • There's no questioning the ambition of the team currently behind the programme of Bristol's Motion club. With larger-scale venues for underground dance music currently in short supply in the city, their In:Motion series of events is a statement of intent, attempting to establish the former skate park as Bristol's premier establishment for big room raving. A usual night at the club is split over two fairly small indoor rooms and a partially sheltered outdoor terrace, but most of the In:motion events have made use of the club's larger ramp room, complete with suitably large line-ups to fill the space. Not all of the parties previous to this one had gone to plan, however. For example, Bloc's bash the month previous had surprisingly failed to pull in the numbers necessary, leading to the promoters shutting the large room and shuffling the line-up around in order to retain a bustling party vibe. So how would Subloaded fare at their 6th birthday? As a clubbing brand inside of the city, there are few that retain the mass appeal of Rob "Pinch" Ellis' weekend raves—indeed, his monthly midweek Dubloaded parties still manage to pack out the intimate back room of The Croft on even the dreariest of Wednesday nights—so outright failure was never going to be on the cards. But the increased capacity still proved difficult to fill, with the gravitational pull of the larger acts in the main room causing a veritable vacuum of people in the smaller arenas, where the likes of Dubkasm, Altered Natives and RSD were laying down accomplished sets of roots reggae, UK house and jungle-tinged dubstep. Upon entering the main room to see Peverelist warming things up with a gently bubbling selection of technoid rollers, my attention was drawn to the Dirt soundsystem that had been installed specifically for the evening. Far from being physically imposing, it struck me as being quite a compact set-up for the size of the room, although my early fears of the volume being a little low had disappeared by the time that Mala and Coki took to the decks under the Digital Mystikz banner. Dirt have had previous form with DMZ, providing the system that pummelled London's Roundhouse at the first RBMA Culture Clash, and the combination of the pair proved equally devastating this time around. Although Mala opened with a rootsy reggae cut, it was his second selection that garnered one of the most lively reactions to sub bass that I've seen in a while. It was surprising, as the tune in question—"Livin Different" from the Return II Space triple-pack—is such an unremittingly deep track, but with Coki about to step up for his two tunes, it wasn't going to stay like that for long. Focusing very much on the manic mid-range of his post-"Spongebob" material, he managed to create a palpable air of hype in the room, although the brash and somewhat two-dimensional style of cuts like "Horrid Henry" quickly made our group disappear to the smoking area. It was there that One4Ho label boss Ghettozoid was spinning alongside her longstanding partner-in-crime Buf, laying down an impeccable mix of house, techno and electro from the likes of Model 500, Chez Damier and the Spacebar Sentiments imprint. Although the system was a little quiet in the outdoor space, such an unexpected onslaught of quality selections gave us little choice other than dancing right by the speakers. It was Loefah that provided the set of the night, however, joining the dots between where he's come from and where he's going with a propulsive mix of halfstep and juke-inspired productions. Doc Scott's jungle set was easily the most anticipated performance of the night amongst the older heads in the crowd, and although he lapsed a bit too much into formulaic techstep during the second half of his slot, there were more than enough prime-time rollers to keep all but the most ardent junglists happy. So did the results match the ambition of the In:Motion team? It may not have been the roadblock that they may have wanted, but the reverberations of the main room that had been problematic in the past had been dealt with, making it quite the formidable raving space. Whether they can take this organisational momentum into 2011 is anyone's guess, but the fact remains that for a night out in a large club in Bristol, Motion is up there with the best.
RA