News / / 14.09.12

TROUBLE VISION

Corsica Studios, London | May 25th

It’s a good club night that can, for however brief a moment, transport you away from the dancefloor to another place entirely. It’s an even better one that can move you not only in space, but in time as well. With that in mind, Crack would like to raise a toast to all who attended last weekend’s Trouble Vision, for this was surely the DeLorean of all parties. 

Arriving at the start of a much-anticipated set from Barcelonan cult hero John Talabot, we push through the crowds to find the main room thick with smoke, mirrorball glittering through the sweaty miasma like a Christmas bauble. Talabot’s just warming up, and the chunky, Italo-esque sounds thumping from Corsica’s notoriously bass-heavy soundsystem are setting the mood well. So far, so standard.

Moving forward, a girl pushes past us clad in angular shoulder pads, her ample perm hovering about her head like an angry swarm of bees. She is followed by a fresh-faced boy in leg warmers with Ken-doll hair, a vest and very, very brightly coloured shorts. All slightly eccentric, perhaps, but no more unusual than many a night we’ve stumbled into.

It’s only once we gaze out onto the dancefloor itself, half of which appears to be occupied by the original cast of Fame, that we begin to wonder if we haven’t slipped down the trousers of time earlier in the night and wound up in a back room of the Paradise Garage. As it turns out, it’s a class of contemporary dance students on a group night out, and John Talabot just happens to be one of their favourite DJs. That’s fine by us; the man in question is doing a bang tidy job keeping the room moving.

Over the next two hours JT winds his way through the ages, from Chi-town classics to some thoroughly modern tech-house, all the while maintaining that melodic vein he has so emphatically made his hallmark. By the time Tensnake takes the stage he certainly has his work cut out. Still, old favourites Coma Cat and Holding Back My Love – no matter how many times you’ve heard them – always do the business, and a surprise drop of the Gigamesh remix of Radiohead’s Everything In Its Right Place ensures he has the crowd eating from his hands by the close.

Added props go to Oscillate Wildly’s Room 3 headliners Skudge for wowing us with an hour of the purest, most uncompromising analogue techno we’ve heard in years, and the Futureboogie family in Room Two, where Waifs & Strays closed things down in true jackin’ style.

Bravo, Trouble Vision. We’ll be sure to break out the Betamax for the next one…

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Words: Bear Gwills

Photo: Antony Price

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