- Sheffield has been undergoing a resurgence in its dance music scene over the last few years, with the city's longest serving house and techno promoters, Cargo, leading the way. Now into their seventh year, Cargo's latest offering saw DJ Sneak, Paul Woolford, Hunee and Matthew Burton booked for a spring Bank Holiday gathering.
With its bone-shaking Funktion One sound system, low ceilings and stripped-back interior, the Fez club is great if you like things a little bit more intimate. To make things even more interesting, Cargo changed the layout of the main room and made additions to the lighting rig, including some mind-bending visuals. They also hijacked a second room off a neighbouring club and converted a disused loading bay into a daytime rave cave.
The party began outdoors, with residents Growmore kicking things off. Their selection of deep house and grooving 4/4 beats was welcomed by the early ravers, and as the evening sun dipped, Hunee took the stage. His eclectic selection of banging disco and funk-infused house drew more and more people to the dance floor before the party carried on indoors. Berlin-based artist Matthew Burton brought some rolling techno early on, mixed in with some sweet-sounding house.
As the clock struck 2 AM, a packed room settled into three hours of seamless mixing by house veteran DJ Sneak. In typical Sneak fashion, his love for pumping Chicago house shone through mid-set. Ending on "House Nation” by Anthea and Celler, he did a tidy job of bringing it back down before Paul Woolford started his set. The room saw a slight change in pace, as Woolford's song choice was both bass-heavy and techno driven. Instead of back-to-back crowd pleasers, he impressed with an onslaught of less obvious thumpers. One hypnotic rhythm followed another. Even as the crowd began to filter out, Woolford proceeded with purpose, nicely capping off another successful Cargo event.