Andrew Weatherall in London

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  • It's not often you go to a club night, recognise only a handful of tunes yet stagger out of the venue with your jaw slack, ears ringing and mind blown—especially on a Thursday. Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston's A Love From Outer Space, however, is well worth the emotional and physical drain of pulling a full day in the office on very little sleep. Held every month in the basement of The Drop in Stoke Newington, ALFOS has been orbiting London's slightly off-beat NW16 post code since last summer, and steadily collected a devoted following over the last 12 months. It's no surprise that the evening is attracting both plenty of plaudits and dancers—the pair of DJs at the helm arguably have two of the most exciting record collections in London. If you want to learn how to move to something outside more often-trod electronic paths, then Johnston and Weatherall are two gentlemen well placed to show you how to do it. Taglined "An oasis of slowness in a world of increasing velocity," the musical manifesto of ALFOS incorporates dance which lands in many different guises, but never knowingly exceeds 122 BPM. So on arriving in Stoke Newington, we were expecting sounds more in tune with Weatherall's dubbed out Nine O'Clock Drop compilation, rather than the upbeat techno he'd recently laid down at XOYO in Shoreditch. When we entered the basement, the sounds emanating from The Drop's serious system were rolling in a slo-mo yet tough house direction. The pace set by Sean Johnston was at a steady chug, but all packed a powerful punch. There was a machine-like toughness to the tackle on display. At midnight, it was Weatherall's turn for the last two hours, all facial hair, tattoos and old "man of the sea" fashion. The busy room—made up of students, fan boys, tourists, inebriated workers and a bunch of more wizened looking heads—totally lapped it up while Lord Sabre himself looked to be lost in the cosmic sounds swirling through the sweaty little basement. His selection, incorporating various slices of proto house and disco all woven together by a lively groove, shaking the place in a fine fashion for a school night, made all the more special by the limits of a 2 AM curfew. By the time he dropped a skewed, tripped out reworking of "Pop Musik" by M, it was time to stop whooping, gather ourselves off the floor and head home. There are a million and one nights in east London and beyond doing their best to overload you with cosmic disco and house, but perhaps none offering as much in variety and surprise than the one presided over by these two veterans of British dance music.
RA