- Two of the most hyped duos of recent times together in London for their international DJ-Kicks tour was always going to be a sell-out event. But after spending half-an-hour standing in a dark alley in Hackney, the East London "secret location thing" started to become a little tiresome. Not only because you've usually been to the "secret" venue at least once before, but due to the fact that you know—as you're standing in a huge line—that this particular warehouse space is probably not going to have the adequate facilities for a 500-odd-person rave.
Having to queue for prolonged periods of time at the door, then for the cloakroom, the toilet and the bar doesn't generally have anyone too eager to get on an extremely sweaty dance floor. The space did, however, benefit from fresh white walls and a ceiling of drapes and sparkling disco balls, filled with an as-to-be-expected ultra cool crowd bouncing happily beneath them.
After being entertained by a series of house-based selections, the dance floor really began to kick off to X-Press 2's "Lazy," followed up by Run DMC and "Billie Jean." It was clear that the crowd wanted to go old school, but dropping Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" went a little too far. Chopping and changing up the tempo across the night, in the same vein as the DJ-Kicks mix they were promoting, meant that slower tracks from the compilation, like Soul Clap's "Lonely C," kept feet moving just as much as the chugging house beats the quartet dished out.
By 5 AM, the music, but not the crowd's enthusiasm, had slowed right down, with the hip-hop classic "Regulate," introduced by Eli Goldstein on the microphone, being the night's obvious highpoint. Surely, one of the attractions of a Wolf + Lamb and Soul Clap DJ set these days is hearing the cheesy tracks you forgot how much you secretly love. And they provided that in spades, finishing up with a sexy number that saw the remaining people on the dance floor coupling off like they were at a school disco for a bit of teenage reminiscing before the lights came on.