Nowadays Nonstop (30/04/23)
Sometimes you’ve just got to go out dancing. This might sound like a banal point to seasoned ravers, or even to normies who know the power of a quarterly blow-out. But when your profession involves spending at least one night a weekend on the clock in the club, the idea of spending any further nights on a dancefloor can begin to lose its lustre. Sleep is a precious commodity, as is sobriety. And beyond that, for a DJ there’s nothing better at undermining the enjoyment of an average night out than one’s own exacting standards. Indeed those standards often nip a night in the bud before it’s even begun. Many’s the time I’ve had reasonably good intentions of heading out to a potentially just-above-average party in Lisbon only to find myself melting into the sofa at 9pm, lured by the more appealing prospect of a streamed speedrun of Office Race.
But enough about my youtube habits. This past two weeks I’ve been in the US to visit my sister in NYC and also, two weekends ago, to play at a fun queer party in Pittsburgh called Jellyfish. I had originally wanted to play more dates to help pay for the trip but, by the time I was planning it, all the venues and promoters I contacted were either already booked up or not interested. So that left me with a completely free second weekend in NYC. I could easily have spent it melting into my sister’s sofa, and indeed I did do precisely that for some of the time, principally in order to read my three year old niece things like Edward The Emu and Babar Visits Another Planet, both surprisingly mindbending experiences. But I also decided to take advantage of my weekend off and have some mindbending experiences of my own on the early morning dancefloor at Nowadays Nonstop — the much awaited sequel to my wonderful Pride experience there last year.
As I write this newsletter I’m listening to the song ‘Getting Away With It’ by Electronic on repeat. This cheerfully misanthropic debut single by the supergroup of Bernard Sumner, Johnny Marr and Neil Tennant popped up at around (I guess) 1pm on Sunday afternoon, four or so hours into Vladimir Ivkovic’s six hour daytime set and seven hours after I’d arrived. I had been at the club since just after 6am, when I walked in to hear ADAB playing ‘Moss’ by A Psychic Yes and felt like I’d simply picked back up where I left off around 4pm on that Sunday afternoon ten months earlier. The room was pretty much the same: foggy, dimly lit by daylight, moodily flashing techno tubes and softly glowing spots, lined with plants and now, a new addition, pink crepe paper over the wrap-around windows. The sound was still excellent. The only difference was the crowd, which, in contrast to the multifarious dancers of last year’s Pride weekend, this time formed quite the sausage fest. Or at least that’s how it seemed to me for the first couple of hours after I arrived, before a new wave of diverse dancers arrived to inject some welcome wilder energy into proceedings.
This kind of flux in a crowd is to be expected in a durational event like this but the ‘hose party’ vibe (as the Portuguese call it) was a bit of a downer given how amazing ADAB’s 6am-9am slot was. Stripped back and bumping house, garage and techno played fast enough to feel zippy but still not actually that fast, habitually lapsing into more expressive Chicago or Detroit arrangements before paring things down again to the grooves. There were fun scratch effects, beat tracks and a couple of tunes that sounded like they were cracking up completely, all in a broad minimal house template. That was the first half of the set at any rate, and I danced without stopping for 90 minutes until I had to go to the toilet. After I returned, it wasn’t long before ADAB reset the room with an unexpected, unaccompanied conga solo that led beautifully into broken beat(s) — still bumping but now also jazzy, soulful, and with the odd vocal. A highly-deserved round of applause at the end of ADAB’s set was the cue to rest my hard-working legs for a minute as Vladimir began his six-hour odyssey. Nowadays affords weary ravers a sports-style bank of seating at the back of the dancefloor from which it’s possible to observe the action and hear the music, so I retreated there and stretched out my back.
Vladimir opened with dense ambience while a switch-over of equipment was undertaken, before dropping an incredibly slow, swinging song in, I believe, 7/4 time. Talk about a palate cleanser. I was not the only person who took this as their cue to have a breather and it would be perhaps an hour and a half before the dancefloor really began to coalesce again, helped by the bar finally serving alcohol once more and, being fair to Vlad, his artfully gradual transition into more accessibly-arranged tunes. I say “more accessibly” because, to be frank, there was nothing I’d call overtly accessible about his selections throughout the first half of the set, which remained resolutely under 110bpm and often pushed the limits of how good a record can sound slowed down. (Someone said Vlad had had Technics M5Gs brought in; to my ears he was surely also playing many of his records on 33 instead of 45.) His mixing was elegant and unobtrusive, smoothly making the most of texture and timing with minimum fuss. Each record was given the opportunity to speak for itself while clearly fitting into an overall arc. And each record had a beguiling story to tell.
It was truly inspiring to see a young, open crowd drawn in by this patient, playfully serious approach. As the hours progressed and the energy swelled, the bpm crept up into the early 110s along with recognisably housey drums and the odd vocal. I think Yello made an appearance while I was at the bar, or maybe when I was making myself a (free) cream cheese bagel. I was four hours of gin and tonics in when he played ‘Getting Away With It’ and it felt like the breaking of a wave. The sentiment of the song was perfectly attuned to the weather outside — British gloom and damp — and whether or not the crowd really recognised it or not, they responded as one. The vibe was thrilling. In his final stretch Vladimir pushed further into more predictably proggy territory, or at least that’s what I heard from an ever growing distance as I slowly extracted myself from the club.
I had been in there for eight hours and desperately wanted a shower, though not from the increasingly torrential rain outside. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I settled for a couple of nice long chats on the smoking terrace before finally braving the storm. My shaky intentions to return later that evening for Mutualism b2b SPRKLBB were firmly put to bed by the subsequent downpour that saw genuine flooding in the streets of Brooklyn. I’m sure for those who stayed in the club it was a case of we’re-all-in-the-same-boat and that extended b2b til midnight must have been truly epic. Had I not spent 40$ on getting into the club and literally all the rest of my money on the aforementioned gin and tonics (and a very good spicy margarita), I might have stuck it out. But the flipside of “sometimes you’ve just got to go out dancing” is “sometimes you just have to know when to go home”, and I make it my business to be a man who can do you both. I left the club smiling, satisfied, and inspired for the coming month of gigs.
Bonus Nowadays Hits
The tall, bearded guy in the kind of dungaree-shorts-dress who held the dancefloor together for pretty much the whole time I was in the club. Undisputed MVP for the day.
The safer space monitors for controlling the phones on the dancefloor. I didn’t see a single screen on the floor for about five hours, and then when I eventually did it was a really jarring experience that, thankfully, was dealt with swiftly and politely by one of the monitors.
Whoever waters all the MFing plants in the club. Your blood, sweat and tears are appreciated.
I mentioned this already but FREE. BAGELS.
My sister, for moving to within walking distance of this magical club.