Audio 3rd Birthday // Audio

Audio’s 3rd Birthday Party
Monday 16th July 2007
Above Audio with JFB & Beardyman, Mex (Black Grass) & Andy Mac
Audio with Transformer, Hot Chip (DJ set), Krafty Kuts

Team Audio decided to go all fancy dress for their third birthday party. Think girls in white short skirts and stripey knee socks and boys in sunglasses and headbands and you’ve got the “Royal Tennenbaums” dropping in at your parent’s house for sandwiches without the crusts before secretly consuming a wrapper of mescaline as they skip their way down to Brighton seafront. Cut to: gaggles of pretty boys and girls in their finest tennis whites sipping flutes of champagne, small groups relaxing around Audio’s modern wood patio deck, dipping into the platters of strawberries and cream, photographers, tennis rackets, known names mixing with DJs and a beautifully warm night with the sun fading ever just so. Don’t you just wish you were there?

I was quite honoured to snag an invite (of sorts) to the AboveAudio starter party. I saw the pictures from last year and kicked myself. It looked like the epitome of fun, and I was determined to get myself stuck in exactly that. Champagne, beautiful people, schmoozing — that’s right up my street. I arrived at about 8.30pm with Brighton Fusion photographer, Eliot Gill, formerly known as Burgess Hill. Eliot of course knew all the girls, whereas I knew all the DJ and promoters. All the boys were there: Andrew and Dave from Stompafunk, Darren Kis from Positive/SWAT, Lloyd from Supercharged/Against the Grain. Poor Eliot! His night consisted of what my former life in Manhattan had been: seeing loads of people you’d had one-night stands with. Thank god my early 20s are over!

En route to the champagne bar, I waved hi to JFB and stopped and had a chat with Bill Smith, the Latest publisher mogul, who wanted to talk about my film. Inside, JFB went behind the decks and demonstrated his turntablism prowess, playing a largely hiphop set, mixing his razor sharp scratching and beat juggling technical skills with some dope tracks and a small dollop of silly samples. Since winning the Vestax UK Championship recently, I remind him of this every time I see him just to watch him blush. What a modest guy! His set was followed by Andy Mac and a few other guys in white lab coats, who moved the music on genre-wise to a more funk tip, albeit vis a vis the Muppet Show theme tune. Oh yes! The bar at Above Audio was fairly heaving by this point and I looked up at the DJ booth in the back in disbelief when they dropped this track. One of the DJ’s (or the DJ’s friend) was doing the cabbage patch and getting down with his bad self. Madness. But hey, they played Cameo’s “Word Up” and Prince’s “Kiss” – put on those legends and you gotta lotta hip-shaking amongst the McEnroe crowds. I found out that Audio were giving away tennis headbands with their logo emblazoned on it – how cool! – I managed to nab one, but I lent it to BF Dave, who probably looked a bit better in it than I would have.

Eliot and I made our descent downstairs to the club at around 10.30pm. Very packed, with a very in the middle of their first song Transformer. I didn’t realise that this live electro-inspired band were from Brighton. They were all looking pretty cool in their tennis whites uniform. The lead singer wore those glasses last seen in “Napoleon Dynamite” – he had this electric energy, this intensely voracious appetite for performing. I enjoyed the set, but did find myself getting a little bored with the pop-song formulaic simplicity of the songs and I reckon they could probably work on fucking with our heads in the future. But energy = good show, for sure.

The Transformer boys were followed by a set from Hot Chip. I have to admit, I was expecting another live show, but they picked some good tunes and the place was so packed and ripe for the picking and Hot Chip were the right fruit-pickers for the job. Seriously. However, which of the five members from Hot Chip was djing, I cannot tell you. The one with the ginger hair? Sorry. Cool set though ! The funniest moment of the night was when I was dancing in the back and Krafty came up to me and said, “Hey, nice tan!” I stopped and we compared arms. I couldn’t believe he could tell in the dark club. I was impressed, and it made me laugh. This was followed by a surprising turn: the crowd literally exploded when Krafty came on. I mean, the place BLEW UP HARDCORE! I’ve seen Krafty a couple of times at Audio, but his set has been a bit variable. Tonight he must have packed the right records in his bag because people were pulling out the moves of the century, filtering from the main dance floor to the two bars in the front of the club and way in the back.

It must have been about two in the morning when Eliot and I slipped away into the dark night. We both had work and it was a Monday night for god’s sake. The place was still totally crazy and I don’t think there was an end in sight for the majority of the tennis rockstars we left behind.

Cheers Audio! Happy birthday and well done. Here’s to another totally mental year of cutting breaks, acid house bleeps, heavy beats, and anything else you can find to treat us with.

Photography by Eliot Gill. Do you need a photographer for your event? Please contact 07804259916 or email mrichter@brightonfusion.co.uk

Audio
http://www.audiobrighton.com

10 Marine Parade
Brighton
East Sussex
Tel: 01273-624343

info@audiobrighton.com

Words: Amy the Film Maker