- In just over a year, Let's Go Swimming has established itself as one of North London's best small parties, hosting leftfield house and techno artists like DJ Sotofett, Leif and Bruce at their Stoke Newington home, The Waiting Room. But it's not just the bookings that keep me coming back to their nights: the crowd are remarkably engaged and ready to sweat from the first beat. Their enthusiasm is always infectious.
Let's Go Swimming went for a change of scenery on Saturday, moving to new venue Five Miles in Seven Sisters. The club is a converted warehouse space decorated in a familiar DIY style—part cocktail bar, part construction site. Benches were made from rough wood and there were 18 kinds of beer on tap. The space includes a large bar and outside area, though I found that walking from the bar's upbeat disco soundtrack to the murky techno of the dance floor had a dislocating effect.
To access the dance floor you had to wind through a dark, serpentine corridor, which, presumably, had been designed to isolate sound, though it often caused bottlenecks. Inside was a long rectangular space with minimal lighting and a DJ booth running along one side. A powerful soundsystem had been built into a wooden unit behind the decks. The night's bill featured two of Europe's best-known female and non-binary DJ collectives, SIREN from London and Copenhagen's Apeiron Crew. When I arrived around midnight, the floor was still fairly empty, as SIREN finished their warm-up slot with a selection of deep, hypnotic techno.
The atmosphere changed as soon as Apeiron's Solid Blake stepped up. Immediately cranking the volume, she leaned into a selection of brawny house and techno, a gritty sound occasionally soothed by smoother cuts like Aurora Halal's "Shapeshifter." The crowd's response was instant, and the space filled up in a flash. Part of the thrill was how often Solid Blake toyed with different rhythms, choosing heavily syncopated tunes and never staying on a solid four-on-the-floor for too long. This style lent the set a welcome unpredictability.
The remaining two members of Apeiron, Mama Snake and Smokey, joined Blake for a back-to-back-to-back to close out the night. Hurtling techno was the order of the day, but there were subtle differences in each DJ's selections. Mama Snake favoured straighter rhythms and hypnotic melodies, while Smokey's tracks were silkier. At one point, Smokey dropped Kowton's "Glock & Roll" to a roar of approval. Solid Blake provided the night's biggest tunes, playing Objekt's "Theme From Q" and Orlando Voorn's unhinged 1992 cut "Systematic Input," released under his Frequency alias. The latter almost drove the crowd over the edge as dozens of ravers hurled themselves in the air, chanting "here we fucking go."
Photo credit /
Matt Smithies