Image by Paul at Vision7Media

All things exciting seem to point to Clapham Common on the bank holiday weekend. But in all honesty, it’s not really all that it’s cracked up to be. Here are some reasons why not to waste your time on the common and some canny alternatives.

Rubbish Soundsystems

Being stuck in the heart of Clapham means you’re in the middle of a massive residential area. Residential area equals people with dogs, children, twitching curtains and a massive thirst for pissing on any parade. Call me crazy but these people hate it when their windows are vibrating during afternoon tea. Unfortunately they also pay taxes and actually have a say in how the world is run. So despite the soundsystem probably having tens of thousands of watts bottled up at its disposal, you can probably expect that the local council has it capped to a dreary cesspit tap drip. So the only way you’re going to hear anything of worth is if you’ve camped out inside the bass bin like some free party crusty.

What you need is some grotty warehouse space where you can crank it up a few notches. It just so happens that Eastern Electrics will be holed up in some grotty warehouse space where they will be cranking it up. Eastern Electrics staple Mulletover will be hosting the main room and they’ve got the Mobilee mistress Anja Schneider to headline. A so so DJ headliner in my opinion (great producer not so great DJ). But don’t worry as Damien Lazarus, fresh from recording a new album, has got Anja’s back. Glimpse will also bolster the support with one of his fantastic live sets too.

But what is really hitting the mark is the Need2Soul second room. They have Patrice Scott fresh from riding in on the recent wave of Detroit techno. He’ll be serving up deep techno cuts alongside the purveyor of dark pummelling beats – Ben Klock. These two names alone should be enough to hit this party for the measly £8 that they’re asking for. Instead they decided to chuck in a Claude Von Stroke and a Trevor Jackson in a third and final Resident Advisor room.

Great deal…. Get those tickets from HERE….  whilst you can!

Short DJ sets

On paper it looks great having every conceivable big name DJ on the bill. But the problem with having them play in one afternoon of raving is that the laws of time only permit a DJs set to be shorter than the time it takes to piss out a tinnie of luke warm festival cider. With only a few hours for prime time DJ sets you’re likely to get a Sasha and Digweed set consisting of half a monster prog record played and tweaked between them. Richie Hawtin will be barely through a bass filter drop before his set ends; and Zabiela would have only had half a fumble of an EFX knob before being kicked off.

What you really need is one amazing terrace and five quality DJs for the day. Who else can do that but Secretsundaze. They return to THAT, the site of this year’s opening party. Hopefully any niggles from last time involving sound and turntables will be sorted. If they get blessed with sunshine then the THAT terrace should bring back some of those happy Space/DC-10 terrace memories of yesteryear. There to invigorate happy terrace times will be the man who is all things insect in house – Steve Bug, a firm favourite of the Secretsundaze bunch and now an annual occurrence. With record labels in every pocket, his extensive electronic tastes are sure to ignite Sunday. In support is Doc Scott, one of the old guards of dance and making a much fabled Secretsundaze return. Like riding a bike, once you know how to rock a crowd you never forget and Doc Scott has been doing so for over a decade and a half. Finally on a live tip is the Canadian born Guillaume and The Coutu Dumonts. They’ve released a string of fantastic tracks on uber-cool labels Oslo and Circus Company and they feature heavily in the Secretsundaze sound. Their brand of percussive house should smoothly go down with the SS crowd.

Don’t miss out. Earlybird tickets are still going at RA.

Tourist Clubbers

Photo by Nick Ensing

The weekend is sure to lay prone to thousands of clueless clubbers that have rolled in for the one weekend of their lives. They’ll be lapping up the big beats as they come flying out the speakers like bricks hitting them square between the eyes. They’ll be saving their biggest “whoops” for the one with the hair on the Loreal advert or the other one that had the hot aerobic fitties in his music video. I mean how can you enjoy and dance to the music when you can’t recall when it was released, what label it was on, what mixes it has featured on and who was the assistant engineer in the second breakdown.

What you need is a versatile crowd open to the unheard boundaries of music. Warm tend to get a good crowd in for their underground house shindigs and the Innervisions showcase at Corsica Studios should be a bit of a roadblock, especially when you’ve got Henrik Schwarz, Dixon and Marcus Worgull on the bill. A massive one for the heads!

Get your tickets from RA.

Despite everything I’ve just said, all these recommendations all take place on a Sunday. So if you are heading down to Clapham Common, I guess it would be rude not to check out a bit of Hawtin, Danny Howells and Sasha & Digweed. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!!

DISCLAIMER: I’ve never actually spent an August Bank Holiday weekend on Clapham Common. So everything i’ve said is completely unfounded and might well be complete bullshit.