By Hughie Rogers-Coltman
It would feel strange writing a review of a Fabric night without acknowledging its current problems. Since re-opening back in 2017 there has been a palpable change of vibe at London’s best-known club. While the club once stood among most prestigious and authentic underground venues in the world, the increase in profile that closure brought (as well as the heightening of restrictions) coupled with the opening of a host of newer, more intimate, and more relaxed venues (Grow, The Cause, and FOLD to name a few) has meant that Fabric no longer tops the list of places to head for many of London’s electronic music devotees. It feels wrong to judge a club on its crowd, but it is undeniably the case that the crowd that you get at fabric these days – large groups of middle-aged men in suits, tank-topped, ray-banned lads glaring across the dancefloor – is a bit of a vibe-killer. These are problems that founder Cameron Leslie addressed in a recent interview with The Guardian; Fabric, now in its third decade as a club, risks turning into one of the very ‘superclubs’ it was set up to counteract.
Yet despite this, the night I had last Saturday – thanks in large part to a lengthy session in room one from Craig Richards and Ben UFO - was probably the best I’ve had at Fabric since it re-opened. The two of them did what they do best – they played to the crowd. While the crowd at Fabric may no longer be the most receptive or musically engaged, Craig and Ben took this into their stride, getting the room moving but gradually pushing boundaries – challenging them while maintaining a definite playfulness through the night. The way they did this was through keeping a strong base in 4/4, mid-tempo groovers throughout their six or so hours in the booth. This is the kind of restraint and flexibility that sets these two apart as genuine DJs first and foremost. Edgier, chin-strokey bleeps and breaks would no doubt have impressed the heads in the crowd, but Craig and Ben were able to recognise a room that needed warming up, and there’s still nothing better than a smooth-but-lethal house roller to do the trick. ‘Tech-house’ has become a dirty word in the eyes of many heads, and perhaps rightly so. But it’s easy to forget that the first wave of the much-maligned genre - the scene that emerged in the late nineties and revolved around Wiggle records and artists like Pure Science and Silverlining – was also the scene that gave birth to Fabric, where Wiggle founder Terry Francis and UK tech-house savant Craig Richards (the very same) were the first residents. Room one’s famous sound system was built for tech-house, in other words, and Craig and Ben seemed to respect this heritage in their set.
Another benefit of keeping things 4/4 in the set was that when they did start to move into breaksier territory it felt really fresh and sharp. At about 4, having been rolling through house grooves, they eased us into the inimitable opening breaks of Objekt’s ‘Theme From Q’. Hardly a deep cut, for sure, but the perfect track to transition into faster and harder territory, and one that properly thunders on a system as powerful as this. From there the sounds shifted towards darker territory recalling early Hessle Audio days and Richards’ more recent electro productions. A particular highlight, which I’m yet to properly ID (knowing these two it probably won’t be released for months) was a bassy remix of SOPHIE’s ‘Faceshopping’, featuring heavy, clunky drums of the kind you’d find in early Blawan releases. Richards was also whipping out some vintage acid and electro cuts at exactly the right moments, pushing the crowd past their boundaries as the night wore on.
One of my favourite things about Fabric is that from about 4 onwards there is a really noticeable change of atmosphere. The tourists head home and everyone gets a bit more space to do their thing. The vibe changes from intense and crowded to spacious and receptive – suddenly people start smiling and chatting to the person dancing next to them. Craig Richards took on sole control of the booth from 5.30 onwards, and responded well to this mellowing of the mood. Tempos were slowed down again, and he moved into blissful left-field house cuts of the kind that are perfect for a thinner crowd. He carried this mood through right up until closing at 7. It’s one of the most unique experiences in clubbing to see Craig Richards work a crowd in room one at Fabric. Perhaps no other DJ in the world has a more intimate connection with a single space and sound system, a fact that is obvious when you see how perfectly he is able to read the room and create an atmosphere within his sets there. While it’s a shame that this is no longer a weekly occurrence, Richards still seems to return quite a lot – he and Ricardo Villalobos completed another marathon b2b last month. Seeing him here with Ben UFO was a joy – and exactly the kind of programming that I think Fabric should be aiming for.
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