News / / 08.10.12

TIEF 1ST ANNIVERSARY

Corsica Studios | 28th September

 

The increasingly mighty Tief, the in-house night from the people who run Corsica Studios, celebrated its first birthday, and it was excellent.

The past year has seen Tief become an essential fixture in many London clubbers’ diaries. With a reputation for drawing an unpretentious, friendly, and music-savvy crowd, Tief has quietly but confidently segued into ‘favourite night’ territory for an expanding, young-ish demographic. It has a smart layout, with a (relatively) quiet bar forming a sort of beery, white-washed antechamber before you enter the much darker Room 1, an adjoining and decently-sized second room, a blessedly large smoking area and, on this occasion, a super-discofied third room. All rooms are kitted-out with impressive soundsystems, with the main aim being truly ‘surround’ sound rather than sheer volume.

Onto the night itself, then. In Room 1, Omar S played an assured set of Detroit house and techno, culminating in a smart transition from Wayne County Hill Cop’s to some other gem we couldn’t quite identify. If the crowd were a little subdued for the first 45 minutes or so, Omar won them over easily in the end with a rousing rendition of Shadow Ray’s remix of Here’s Your Trance... After that, the Bicep boys stepped up, mining mid-90s (and older) house music for a hugely crowd-pleasing set. It was particularly nice to see Jeremy Underground Paris, a man with a truly encyclopaedic knowledge of house, join Bicep for a bit of B2B2B (much) later on; the respect these two acts share for one another was reflective of the sort of friendly, ‘community’ vibe Tief has built its reputation on. Someone complained about a lack of variation, but that seemed a little churlish – there were two whole other rooms to explore and you can’t really argue with their selections if they can keep the kids dancing well into the next morning.

Daniel Wang’s selections came generally from the more obscure and beardy end of disco, marred, a little, by some dodgy mixing, but no one in Room 3 seemed to care. This room was less about trainspotting mixes and more about having fun, and Wang sensed this completely, at one point donning a triangular hat made from cardboard, fist-pumping all the while. The always reliable Wolf Music boys played a solid set of mid tempo house and disco, earning themselves even more fans (the ‘Wolf Pack’?).

A particular highlight, though, was Hunee’s set in Room 2. He managed to balance the ‘proper house music’ offered in Room 1 with the sense of fun in Room 3, playing a varied set of melodic, Chicago(ish) house, some discoid classics and a fair amount of new material that prompted a steady stream of earnest fan-boys to sheepishly seek IDs. We can only hope that this music sees a proper release, and Hunee’s respectful-but-not-slavish-to-the-past selecting style becoming a bit more common.

A big success, therefore, for a night that’s fast becoming a London institution.

 

 

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Words: Robert Bates

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