- It was uncharacteristically warm for an April evening in London town; the kind of evening best spent lazily drinking until you are drunk in the dwindling sunshine, following the sun from one side of the pub's garden to the other, until you admit defeat and drunkenly wobble your way inside the ever welcoming bar. It was also the kind of evening best finished inside one of the UK's most well established clubs, Fabric, listening to the finest d&b DJ's around, at the infamous and hugely popular Playaz night.
The True Playaz are a drum & bass collective founded by the legendary DJ Hype, with support from DJ Zinc and Pascal, and their notorious Playaz nights are held religiously on the last Friday of the month. Their residency with Fabric means that, for a Playaz fan, the dripping bricks and dungeon-like ambience of the venue both go together to make the night what it always promises—heady, intoxicating and as much about the experience as the music.
Because of the unexpected sunshine, I expected to roll up to huge queues packed out with the usual Fabric crowd of scruffy/fashionable London socialites, snap-happy Japanese tourists and pock-faced boys in baseball caps looking decidedly moody. After years of experience, I anticipated at least a half-hour queue, so I was pleasantly surprised when we only had to spend five minutes and even less time hanging our coats up. After buying a depressingly expensive bottle of beer from the nearest bar and locating the toilets (to adjust make up and skirt length, and be quietly nosy at a boy being violently sick in an open cubicle) we headed towards the main arena.
All my thoughts of an empty queue equalling empty club were quashed on nearing the entrance to room one. I couldn't see the DJ even on tip-toes, just green lasers skimming the tops of heads, but we could definitely hear the thumbing bass that vibrated into my chest and the slick mixing synonymous with the DJs that the Playaz enlist for each of their events.
For want of a better view and more space, we wove through the crowds and climbed the stairs to the balcony, where we could look out over the sea of people moving. The man-of-the-moment, the reason most of these sweaty bass-line loving people were here, DJ Hype, stepped up to the decks in the early morning. He brought with him an appreciative roar from the crowd, and over the next hour-and-a-half tantalised and saturated the audience with deep, driving drum & bass, basslines that penetrated the body and an infectious energy.
LTJ Bukem and Conrad took control of the second room with their sexier, more sensual, liquid funk sounds—providing an almost welcome respite from the chaos in the main room. Conrad doesn't so much MC as speak poetry down the microphone, and his lucid tones complemented LTJ Bukem's set.
The True Playaz have set up camp at Fabric, and long should they reign. The loyal crowd, the friendly atmosphere and the legendary venue go together to make something that many events strive for without ever succeeding—a night that not only true drum & bass fans will love, but a night that covers the entire spectrum and ticks most, if not all, the boxes along the way.