Flawless Nights : Joe Ransom // The Volks

Joe Ransom’s back at Flawless. A different reviewer, a different night. Check out the last review from June: Joe Ransom

This is going to be an impressively short review, folks, but I won’t apologise for that. Three clubs, two after parties, and three reviews – all in one weekend. I spent all of Sunday, as you can imagine, in bed. And then there was Supercharged on the Wednesday following just when I was starting to feel a little bit too sensible…

On Friday night, I made my way to the Volks after the Speedway5 gig on foot, leaving Polar Central on Queens Road and cutting down Middle Street towards the seafront. People, I’ve learned a valuable lesson, which I’m going to pass on to you: always take taxis. Always. I don’t care if you don’t have any money. Beg for change on your local street corner until you have enough. Dig around your bedroom for every 2p you can find. Hell, steal 5ps from your best friend. I don’t care how you do it, just don’t put yourself in the traumatic experience of walking alone in the middle of town on a Friday night. Drunk wild faces leered out of car windows as I pushed through the sharp wind blowing off the sea. Even though it was early, I watched as a city of call centre workers and labourers made a quick, efficient, and devastatingly obscene descent into the freedom of Friday. Bolted drinks at O’Neills and Wetherspoons made groups of people walk like monkeys as they passed along the Madeira parade route for the “Festival of the Idiot-Minus-the-Savants”. This parade was ugly – they were no costumes. A modern girl at heart, I of course don’t believe in exercise for any reason; clearly, I was a fool.

A recent survey indicated that the Volks have some of the city’s nicest bouncers. And I agree. The four standing at the door all gave me a cheery hello and didn’t bother to check my bag, which if they had, they would have found a nice big bottle of Captain Morgan’s dark rum to confiscate. At 10.30pm , the club was reasonably busy. I went up to the bar to buy a coke and ran into two actors who were in my first feature film. Iris, a Spanish actress, played the lead female role, and Dan, a comic genius who played the main character’s best friend. It was nice to have some unexpected catch ups to start the evening.

Some confusion over the line up: “I heard Howie B isn’t playing tonight.”

“Really? Oh shit.”

“He isn’t meant to. That’s the next night.”

“Oh.”

The main DJ for the night was not Howie B, as assumed by some, but Joe Ransom, resident DJ for Fabric Live in London . With a five year residency under his belt, Ransom was returning to Brighton , and more importantly, to Flawless. I’ve heard from sources that Ransom will be mixing it up more often as he is now one of Flawless’s new residents. If only I’d known it wasn’t just going to be a breaks night…

I was looking for a dark corner to do my cocktail mixing in when Joel, one of the Slacker’s DJs and his girlfriend waved me over, where they were sitting at a table near the entrance. A dark corner, friends to chat to – ideal. I flung my coat behind us and splashed some rum in my glass. My friends thought I was reckless, but I shrugged. Who wants to spend £5 a drink? Barney and his friends soon came over as we waited for the club to get busier and, it seemed, for the music to change from ragga. Barney informed me that he read my last review, which implicated him in a few minor criminal acts, and I nervously asked him if he minded me using his real name. He laughed and waved me off – “Naw, that’s fine,” he said. “I thought it was funny actually. But there was one thing you HAVE TO CHANGE.” I leaned forwards apprehensively. “What?” I asked him. “My name,” he said. “It’s Barney with an –ey. You have to change it. Don’t ask me why it’s so important.” I’m not in the business of protecting the innocent, only writing what happens – spelling people’s names right is a reasonable request. If I spell your name wrong, let me know. Just for the record.

For the first hour, this table was where we held court: it served as the primary converging point, the lookout point from which we picked out friends from the stream of friends walking past. Jason and Cat, Jez and Claire, Jamie, Tiff. Even the Speedway 5 lot came down to relax after their gig. Several drinks in, me, Simon and Ela ran off to the dancefloor, as Joe Ransom began his set. The music so far was good. A disco-tinged deep house tune was playing, and Simon and I looked up at the speaker. We awaited the inevitable change of genre. “It sounds like it’s gonna go to disco,” I decided. Simon agreed. “Or breaks.” Simon grinned – “I’d like to see it go to breaks. That would be interesting.”

A good club night is a combination of many things; for me, it’s good friends and good music. Both are important, and though you can have one without the other, it’s more important to have a balance of the two. For several factors, some of them beyond the Flawless team’s control, that night was not the best I’ve had. On the plus side, I did my one good deed of the evening (what seems like every evening) in sourcing drugs for some friends. I shared my rum with many (but obviously not enough judging from my hangover the next morning) of my friends. I had a few enjoyable dances compliments of some good mixes provided by Ransom. Downstairs, I got my fill of old school hiphop with the always irreverent, out of control party DJs, Sick lil Monkees.

On the downside, I found that most of my friends were smashed beyond comprehension. Most of the night felt like an exercise in seeing my friends disintegrate. The general crowd upstairs felt a little random and disparate, as though people found themselves in there by mistake and had never heard of any musical genre besides drum n bass. I made the fatal mistake in wearing a wool skirt and a suede boots (schoolboy error?), which is not conducive to clubbing. As a result, I quickly got too hot and alternated between the floors to cool down.

There was a thread of sadness that ran through the night for me, mainly because everyone I knew was affected by the recent death of a friend, and drunkness on this evening was a remorseful escape rather than a vehicle of fucked up-ness. There were times when I wasn’t sure about the music – mind you, Ransom had some blindingly good moments – but overall I felt like the set was a warm-up for something else. Which, perhaps at the Volks, never came. Lights went on at two, and for some, that was it. For me, it was the after party, annoying my friends at 5 in the morning, pizza, then sleep. Oh yeah, did I tell you I was taken hostage by 8 Estonian performance artists recently? Some people, it seems, just don’t see the irony. I guess it was just one of those nights.

Final word: By the end, Ransom had the crowd rapped around his finger. They were loving it. Get your taxi fare sorted, wear the right clothes, and go check out the next Flawless night – Howie B – on Friday 28 th October 2005 . Same place, same time, and if you just can’t get it together, Flawless are on every 2 nd and 4 th Fridays of the month at the Volks. No excuses.

http://www.flawlessinternational.com/

The Volks
http://www.volksclub.co.uk/

3 The Colonnade
Madeira Drive
Brighton
East Sussex

01273 682828

Email not known

Words: Amy the Film Maker