Travel: A London Party Review

Above picture by Katie Brook

When I told my Berlin friends and colleagues that I was going to London for New Year’s, many of them stared at me like I was mad.

“My Gott... why? It’s so expensive there!” said one.

"The last time I went to London, it was about 25 pounds to get in to one club!” said another.

Other comments I got were:

“London parties there are great... but they always finish too early.”

“You cannot drink in London. One Prosecco and you’re broke!”

“And the men in the clubs there are slimy. They just don’t leave you alone.”

I said the same thing to them all: "I'll be fine... I know places that aren't like that." I mean, who needs clubs when you have the squat party scene?

Exhibit A: North London.  January 1st. 12:30 a.m.  

My friend Al and I are sitting on a bus, headed to a gabba/breakcore/drum n’ bass party in an abandoned church in North London. Not a rented, renovated or otherwise gentrified old church, just an old abandoned one. 

On the bus, we end up sitting next to a group of three girls and one guy. Their faces are glowing. The guy is wearing one of those baggy hooded parka jobs, unzipped and hanging akimbo. The girls’ already-curly hair is curling ever more floridly in the humid air. Every part of their outfits is unravelling but, like those jeans that look better when they're broken in, it suits them.

Al and me can't help eavesdropping on their banter, seeing as they're sat right next to us and drunk n' shouty, to boot. We overhear that they're headed to a psytrance party that is just down the road from the party that we’re going to. 

"Oh, you're going to the [name removed] party, right?” asks Al, turning to the black girl next to him. She nods in a downcast way. "It's the one right next to the [name removed] tube, yeah?"

“Do you know where that is?  Cool!" she blurts, "Kerstin couldn't find it on her map app.”  A second girl with dark curls, sat opposite her, stops stabbing away at her smartphone screen and turns to us.  A pearly stick-on star gleams on her cheek.  She tells us the name of the road and we tell her what stop she needs to get off. They group looks wildly soothed, then starts pressing us for details about where we're going.  A few minutes later they also press their half-empty wine bottles into our hands, plying us with second-hand drunk that we're happy to receive.

"Keep them!" cries the girl with star-sticker on her face.
 
“We’re so sad you aren’t coming with us!” says one of her friends as they all stumble to their feet at the next stop and get off the bus, waving and calling out Happy New Year's.

“Wow. They. Were. So. Nice,” Al says with a wistful, admiring glance out the window.

A few stops later we get off. After swerving into an off-license to pick up drinks, we swerve back in the direction of the abandoned church. It's not hard to spot, what with that huge born-again Christian slogan painted across it. It looks dead and dark but when we get closer we see a little portcullis of light, a postal slot of some sort. I call through it until a face appears on the other side.

“Hello!” says the face, squinting at us through darkness and a few dreadlocks, falling into his face. We tell him what party we're here for; he opens the door.

The main dance floor is up a few sets of stairs: a whitewashed, vaulted glory hole that's been discarded after some sort of one-night stand with fundamentalism. For some reason, it makes me think of one of those pagan wells that Christians always build their churches on top of - except in reverse. This one-time Christian center has been reclaimed by the natives for all-night dancing rites.

A guy my friend knows sits next to us an offers us some eye drops that help to see things more clearly and colourfully than before. Juddering geometric lights and dancers skipping to jungle rhythms pay homage to the formless spirit of music.  A cabaret of hoodies dances to old skool on stage as the crowd in front of the speaker stack grows.  Even without the strictures of godly doctrine, they still see the light and feel joyous, connected to something higher, in the presence of sound.

Exhibit B: South London. January 1st.  Around 4:00 a.m.

On the way to the second party we find ourselves in the company of another group of psytrancers, only this time, we are the ones who are lost and they are showing us where the next party is. So far we haven't paid for anything except for a few store bought drinks and other sources of energy.  The Tube is free on New Year.   But even in the underground,  we will have to pay to get into the actual party on New Year's. Eve  They call them "free parties" not because of the price but because of their refusal to adhere to any set of boundaries - stylistic, musical, social as well as legal.

The pint-sized ring leader of the psytrancers is a dark woman in a kaleidoscopic puffy jacket and huge, opaque shades.  Her face is dotted with sparkles that highlight her dimples whenever she smiles. She points us in the direction of a well-hidden courtyard off the high road.  Then she waves and says, "Have a good one!" before heading on down the street with her all-male entourage in tow.

On the other side of the courtyard fence, we find a familiar scene: vans are parked right up to the various doorways and people are thronging around them, in and out of various entrances. It takes a minute to realize which one we should be lining up for. The queue is more of a rounded, bulging triangle of people than a line actually. I mutter, "There can't be many English people here..." They are known for their ability to form a queue, even in the underground.  

When we finally make it through the triangle shaped queue-scrum, we find ourselves inside of a deceptively small, boring entrance hall. It's wall-to-wall with people, all of them are heading in wildly different directions… whether they're moving towards anything, or just away from everybody else, is not clear. It's a bit claustrophobic and the only music seems to be coming from somewhere beyond the mass.  Guys in football jackets and girls in heels crush past psytrancers and bohemian artistes in tactile layers of floating whimsy, who skirt around crusties with spiky dreads pulled into donuts, the occasional mohawk.  All are connecting and rebounding like electrified pinballs in the tight space.  A dull roar of voices from Spain, Italy, the Home Counties and by golly, even a few propa Londonas, fills the air.  

Beyond the crowd and the mundane hallway, we find a building as mind-bending as the labyrinth in Berlin's Wilden Renate club. But bigger... much, much bigger. Stairwells jut off into corners and the crowd curves towards airy lofts.  We cross an indoor bridge to a neighbouring building and can't find our way back.  In it are rooms of loose-limbed drum n’ bass and ear-rupturing dubstep... of psytrance refugees from a nearby party that has been shut down. In one room, the only light show is provided by a writhing woman wreathed in blinking lights. The sounds strain from several different rigs and blend into one. A half dozen rooms are playing hardtek. There is even one lonely room devoted to progressive house; I still can't figure how it got in here, a party that seems wholly devoted to the bona fide underground London sounds, invented by at parties just like this one.

We lose most of the rooms as quickly as we find them but eventually make it back to the biggest one, on the main floor.  It's a warehousey loading bay. People are dancing on metal stairwells and speaker stacks are dotted round the dancefloor as islands of sound.   In the bar next door, where drinks cost only a few pennies more than they did in the offy, Al finds a tenner and immediately orders several drinks.

Across the bar from us, a pixie-ish blonde in bare feet, fishnets and a bra, sat on a table top, is getting a stiff look from an androgyne dressed like Adam Ant. Buttoned-up and encased in her image like a hostage, Ms. Ant is the antithesis of the blonde's effortless aesthetic. 

"Why are you wearing so little clothing?" demands the Ant. 

"Because I like it!" the blonde retorts.  "You got a problem with that?" The Ant tries to argue around her question, avoiding any admission that she does have a problem with it.  She quickly gives up and slinks away, though.

"Ant" is the exception that proves the rule defined by nearly everyone at the party. All that matters here is what you like; as long as it's not hurting others, it's accepted.  Free parties are not a place to create artificial consensuses based on intimidation or holier-than-thou moralization.  Inevitably, some people will find it harder to let go of their limits than others - but they are the minority. It's a reversal of the day to day reality.  

Our favourite room is across the hall from the warehouse room. Low ceilings, shuttered windows and glowing pink lights. The dancefloor's always full and the DJs respective sets segue through every underground style: from old school, jungle, hypnotic acid techno, steely electro, all mixed on vinyl by guys and girls who play like they were born with a set of Technics underhand.  There's no fixed sound, it revolves to accommodate the changing tides of people, just as long as they keep rolling in. 

We leave around 1:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, too early for the room to be anywhere near closing: it's still packed.  Later, a friend tells me the party went on until Thursday.

So now I’m back in Berlin, and people keep asking me how my trip went.  Was it expensive?  Well, the trains were; the shops were too... but the parties, no.  They were free in style, spirit, body and mind. They didn't end too early and I wasn't limited to one drink or one party or even one borough.

And as for the guys?  I do have a vague recollection of someone getting down on bended knee and asking me (begging actually) to fly with him to Rome the next day. I had to decline... no time... but I will gladly take a ticket to London again next New Year's Eve.

Video courtesy of Katie Brooks, free party photographer extraordinaire.

Club Alien and co. will be bringing a slice of London's free party scene to Berlin this March with an event featuring DJs from Stay Up Forever records and other underground (anti)institutions in the U.K. capital. Stay tuned to the blog for more details!