Alfresco Disco deliver with Rave of the Decade Part 2

If you’re going to throw a party and call it the ‘Rave of the Decade’, you’d better be ready to deliver. If you’re going to smash it out of the park and then a year later throw ‘Rave of the Decade: Part 2’… you’d better be ready to vault the bar you’ve already raised.

Alfresco Disco’’s parties are inspired by the free rave 90s culture, with Rave of the Decade Part 2 explicitly referencing “the early Sunrise parties that changed everything”. That’s all well and good but when you’re boarding a bus at 2pm on a murky grey Saturday afternoon, you might need a little time to warm up.

Decked out in our finest ‘nineties’ gear – or the approxomation of it that comes from a quick Google and a few lost hours on glowmania.co.uk – we pile on the assembled fleet of buses. Events immediately turn raucous and the Alfresco monitors have their work cut out, especially when the drive (billed as a 20 minute journey) takes more like an hour due to heavy traffic. Excitement builds to the extent that our top deck treat passing drivers to a round of mooning in order to let off some good-natured energy.

Eventually we pull into what appears to be a large farmyard and are greeted with the sight of a big wheel and a barn full of revellers who look to be getting proceedings well under way. Further exploration reveals that two large barns form Rooms 1 and 2, with a hidden ‘chill out room’ over the way full of comfy air seats playing host to a 7 hour set from TRI3E. Despite the double whammy of Dirtytalk residents in Room 1 and Stamp the Wax in Room 2 I can’t resist the lure of the rides where, full disclosure, I spend a lot of time and most of my money as the day progresses.

By now the Alfresco Disco DJs are heating things up in both rooms, and as the light begins to fade outside we start to feel more illicit. The treats keep on coming with both Marshall Jefferson and Luke Solomon on the decks in Room 1 before DJ Die closes down Room 2 with an old school hardcore set, bringing things to a glow stick waving, whistle blowing, foot stomping conclusion.

Piling back on the buses with significantly less energy than the inward journey, everyone is shattered but content. A rave of the decade (part 2) was promised, and for the second time in as many years, that’s what Alfresco delivered.