- Dalston. Possibly one of London's grubbier corners. But if you've read any local papers recently, you can't move for journalists stumbling over themselves to plant a flag and claim they were first to discover the coolest 'hood on the planet. And the hub for the hipsters right now is Visions Video Bar—a seedy, tiled basement bar that's the venue du jour for disco heads and indie fashion fans alike. So it's only fitting that it was rammed to its clammy walls on Saturday, for a party by London's always hot Secretsundaze crew, on one of their winter workouts.
Underground house music deserves to be heard in seedy spaces like this. Mad queues to get in. A toilet line that extended onto the dancefloor. Plastic cups from the bar. A thumping, but temperamental sound system. A dancefloor so dark at times you couldn't see whose feet you were going to tread on next. But underpinning everything there were bass-driven, underground house grooves battering you round the head from Deep Vibes' Sascha Dive, alongside reliable residents Giles Smith and James Priestly. I had such a good time I can't remember a single tune. But I know I danced and danced.
Yeah, the young, checked-shirt-and-cardigan'd locals stuck out a bit compared to the SS faithful—but you can't deny 300 people cheering deep house on a rainy Saturday night (breakdowns or not). After December's cavernous gig at The Scala, this party at Visions was much more up SS's alley—a cool location, in a hot area, packed to the gills with people who wanted to party more than pose.
Who said January was a quiet month?