Adonis (01/01/23)
Some passing impressions from Adonis’s big New Year’s Day knees-up on Sunday.
Malarie’s Gallery
We arrived at the party around 2.30pm in time to catch Marie Malarie in the upstairs room, the ‘Gallery’. When I played at Adonis back in August I had to leave before the inside rooms opened, so I had no idea what to expect apart from what my friends had told me, principally that it was “insanely hot”. This was indeed the overwhelming first impression of the room, given that it was already bursting with about 300 shirtless muscle gays and a few hangers on (us included), with no ventilation to speak of. The space was dark and sweaty and lit minimally by some linear laser arrays on the ceiling — like the ones in Dalston Superstore’s basement. On the advice of my friend A, a seasoned Adonis goer, we made our way to the very back of the room where there was a bit more space, a big fan and a speaker stack, and we got our legs in gear stomping to Marie’s fast and trancey sound.
I moan boringly about this seemingly unstoppable trend in today’s party scene at pretty much every opportunity, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to its charms when done well and in the right context, and Adonis at 3pm on New Year’s Day is totally the right context. And in between the basic bangers, Marie was playing some much more interesting selections — this one a bit industrial, that one a bit funkier — while in terms of energy and mood it’s clear that what they do, they do very well. The room was pumping and it was just the kick up the backside we needed to get into full-on Adonis mode for the coming six hours.
Hannah Holland
At August’s Adonis I warmed up for long-time resident Hannah Holland on the outdoor stage and although I enjoyed her set after I’d finished, it was in that slightly unfocussed post-DJing way where I was too busy recalibrating from all the adrenaline of performing and catching up with my friends to really focus on everything she was doing. One standout moment was the grimey UKG blast of Sia’s ‘Little Man’, which I didn’t know at the time, but my friend Sam told me was (rather bizarrely) one of Sia’s first singles. Even though I wasn’t fully engaged with it I’d noticed two things about Hannah’s set: it was very varied style-wise, and it inhabited a similar groove- and BPM-space to my own personal zone of comfort. All of which meant I was curious to hear her in her element at this party.
She did not disappoint.
The location of the room she was playing in — the ‘Warehouse’ — was a bit of a mystery on arrival, not just for us but for several people we chatted to. We heard a rumour that it was half-hidden through the ‘Tent’ and decided to have a look, which also gave us the opportunity to check out the space where GIDEÖN would be playing a bit later on. Sure enough, through the Tent (which was already heaving) we discovered a door that led into a separate building consisting of a huge, high-ceilinged warehouse decked out with red lasers, giant disco balls and a scrolling sign saying ‘ADONIS HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023’. The latter touch felt a little unnecessary though the lettering did, when it got dark outside, give the room a kind of retro sci-fi appeal. Regardless, the vibe at 4pm was already one of joyful hedonism, with Hannah and Earth People’s ‘Dance’ providing an apt soundtrack.
Over the course of the next hour or so she played a wonderfully varied mix of crowdpleasers and curveballs, including a couple of mid-00s revival moments (‘Mouth To Mouth’ and ‘The Sky Was Pink’) that only confirm my belief that IT’S REALLY HAPPENING. (Shanti Celeste played ‘Orbitalife’ back in August. I’m still waiting to hear ‘Baby Kate’.) Sia made another welcome appearance, before the final stretch of hands-in-the-air epics: a club remix of Madonna’s ‘Jump’ (with a ‘Vogue’ sample in there somewhere too), the Tedd Patterson edit of the Morales mix of ‘Hyper-Ballad’ by Björk (with its yearning disco piano chords), and a closing blast of the Pixies to lead into Paranoid London’s liveset. This salvo was a moment of pure punk that cleared out a third of the gays in the room in terror, but kept the rest of us there headbanging with glee.
It’s worth mentioning that the sound in the Warehouse (and indeed in every room of the party) was bang on — loud enough to immerse the crowd and give a body feel but remaining clear and dynamic. With earplugs in it was fantastic…until, that is, Paranoid London came on with their liveset at what felt like 10db louder than Hannah had been playing at. The speakers strained, the air got thick with distortion and I began to laugh hysterically. It was a genuinely outrageous moment, continuing the punk feeling from Hannah’s parting shot but pushing it over the edge into parody. The acid basslines, crunchy but defined on their records, sounded soupy and indistinct. The tweeters seemed to be spluttering. Josh Caffe’s live vocals — delivered from atop the stage — were swamped. We stayed for about 10 minutes in awe of the effect but overwhelmed by the density of noise, then beat a hasty retreat. I hope for everyone’s sake they turned it down at some point.
GIDEÖN
The last time I saw Gideön was at Panoramabar back in March, the evening after I’d played there for the first time. Between my turn and his I’d gone to the hotel, had a nap, met my friends, had a funny afternoon brunch sesh with them, and then headed back to Pbar to catch the second half of Sedef Adasi’s evening set. I wrote about that experience here, the main gist being that I’d admired his uncompromising approach and could not fault his technical precision and craft, yet something about it left me a little cold. To me it had felt like, once two hours or so had passed, someone — us or him or both — needed a slap to break us out of the weightless, seamless flow.
Well, his set at Adonis on Sunday had slaps aplenty. In fact, right from the word go there was an element of chaos in proceedings that felt totally in keeping with the party’s atmosphere in general. As Grace Sands played her final record, some kind of technical switch over was necessary from the turntables to CDJs in a booth that looked like it barely had room for the two DJs, let alone sound guys and extras. The needle scratched, the music went silent, and a general milling around commenced throughout the tent before Gideön’s first tune came on, went off again, and then finally came back on for good.
It was a stark contrast with March’s seamlessness and all the better for it. Those of us that stuck this intermission out suddenly found we had more space to move around on the dancefloor. And — I can speculate — the disruption may also have put Gideön himself in a less single-minded headspace. The set that ensued certainly felt like it, full of dynamism, risk-taking and FUN, and as a result we absolutely loved it from start to finish. The sound in the tent was surprisingly pumping and we set up shop in a space near the front right of the booth, where there was a contingent of what looked like London’s older guard of ravers, of all stripes, with their dancing shoes firmly on.
Vocals, acid lines, pianos, garage drops, disco loops — all of this and more was delivered within that formalist framework (“unflinchingly orthodox house vibes”) but, this time, not feeling limited by it. James Hillard from Horsemeat Disco moseyed past. Courtney Act was spotted. A friend pulled a tiny Brazilian. A highlight of the set was of course the UKG edit of Bell Biv Devoe’s ‘Poison’, with its big singalong and rug-pull drop (“That girl is…” BAM), and we were treated to three of the tracks from Gideön’s own Ritmo EP, but really the set was one long highlight and at the end of the two hours we left the tent exhilarated.
You Don’t Know Me (1 Hour Loop)
Towards the end of the party Cait, back in the Warehouse, played 2022 MVP AVH’s ‘You Don’t Know Me’ featuring Duane Harden, the last of many Moments with a capital ‘M’ of the day. The radio edit of this tune is a concise disco house weapon featuring a tasteful fade out around the four minute mark. It gives you six or so choruses in between the verses and bridge, more than enough for the earworm to do its work. The room, of course, exploded when it dropped, and everyone including me sang along at the top of their voice.
Little did we realise, though, that the extended version is one of those tunes that places the emphasis on ‘extended’, and not in a good way. You know those misguided choices people sometimes make at karaoke that end up with several minutes of the chorus over and over and over again? (Toploader, I’m looking at you.) Well, the extended version of ‘You Don’t Know Me’ features the basic song — with its six choruses — for its first four minutes, leaving four more minutes of…more and more choruses. Listening back to it now I count 14 in total, which is 14 “you don’t know mes” and 14 “you don’t understand mes”, plus some extras along the way.
“WE KNOW YOU ALREADY!!” I shouted out in pure exasperation. It was interminable. As the outro finally began and Cait started mixing into the next record, I turned to my friend T and jokily asked her what she’d do if the track came back in again. “Go home,” was the immediate and fully justified answer.
Thankfully, that was the last we heard of Duane and soon Cait was closing out the evening with a quick blast of Kelis. An extended mix of a cloakroom queue was all that remained to be navigated before we headed back to A’s to decompress.
(And yes, while researching this, I have listened to that chorus enough times to want to throw myself out of the window. Incidentally, ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ has the same number of choruses per minute, which tells you all you need to know.)
For a 14-hour party with four separate rooms plus adjoining spaces, holding what felt like over 2000 ravers most of whom had presumably not slept, the verdict from our crew was that it was a resounding success: the music, the sound, the production and the organisation in general (cloakroom and poor plumbing aside) were all conducive to the best of times, and there were no cunts, at least not in our immediate vicinity. It felt like an auspicious way to ring in the new year and I hope that Adonis — and this new Docklands venue — continue to flourish in 2023.