- It's almost impossible to utter the words "Chicago" and "disco" without "Rahaan" following closely. Having built up his credentials since the '80s DJing both in his home city and worldwide, Rahaan Young has become rightly regarded as one of the best disco DJs still spinning records today. A launch party for his new Edits Vol. 1 CD seemed the perfect opportunity for him to sample the vibrant London disco scene in a venue that has become synonymous with it, Shoreditch's The Horse & Groom.
The venue had installed an enhanced soundsystem and new Bozak rotary mixer especially for the night, which Lasermagnetic DJs Neil Thornton and Johnny Hiller warmed up for the first hour. The distinctively punchy, bass heavy system sounded even more impressive as the pair dug deep into their record collection to showcase exactly why The Horse & Groom is one of the best places for disco in East London. There is simply nowhere else in town where you'll hear unreleased Bobby Viteritti edits played to a packed out dance floor on a Saturday night.
The tall brooding figure of Rahaan appeared behind the decks at around midnight, starting off gently for the first hour or so with some mid-tempo grooves, giving the room enough time to get some momentum going before really letting loose on the East End crowd. By the time the first of many big disco anthems, Diana Ross's "No One Gets the Prize," kicked us into fourth gear, we were perfectly shaped and ready to go. After some intense discofied house which thumped heavily around the room, Alice Smith's haunting vocals sent one almighty tingle down the spine of the heaving dance floor as a part of Maurice Fulton's remix of "Love Endeavour." Rahaan worked the surprisingly young crowd as skilfully as he manipulated the newly installed Bozak rotary mixer.
The relatively young dance floor perhaps inspired his choice to mark the halfway point with "Welcome to the Pleasuredome," an unmistakeable nod back to his own wide-eyed youth spent dancing to Ron Hardy at Chicago's legendary Music Box. "Shooting stars never stop / Even when they reach the top" goes the lyric, and, after building the dance floor up to what might have seemed as high as it could go, he turned it up another notch with a soulful house version of Pharaoh Sanders' "You Got to Have Freedom." Rahaan had reached the top and smashed through the roof taking the clientele of this small Shoreditch pub with him.
All too often DJs lose direction after taking a crowd to such highs, whipping the tablecloth from underneath the set they've spent so long preparing and leaving everything to come crashing clumsily down. Rahaan, on the other hand, took time to carefully take his dance floor off the boil, let it simmer with some soulful house and groove edits, Slave's "Just a Touch of Love" being my highlight, and bring it back up with a selection of bouncing disco re-works and rare grooves, some of which, most notably First Choice's "Pressure Point" came from his own newly released album of edits. There were big grins all round, even from the notoriously reserved man himself as A Taste of Honey told us to "Clap your hands / Stomp your feet" in another of Rahaan's own arrangements from the new album.
A big name like his will inevitably draw in crowds to match, which The Horse & Groom notoriously struggles with. At the night's peak, finding your way to the toilet or bar felt like an impossible struggle as the entire floor space became a shoulder-to-shoulder dance floor with people dancing on tables and on the stairs. But as uncomfortable as it can sometimes be, herein also lies the venues charm. No other small venue can boast intensity like it, especially when a man of Rahaan's talents is controlling the crowd. The floor space mercifully thinned out after Rahaan closed his set, leaving the remaining dancers some room to appreciate a closing hour from Turkish disco don Johnny Rock. Upon reflection, however, lack of dance floor space will be the last thing on my mind. I'll look back and remember a man fantastically skilled at his craft giving a performance that you quite simply don't see every week.