Music : Electro House, Deep House, Progressive House, Tech House, Tribal House, Old Skool House, Acid House, Electro, Big Beat, Breaks, Detroit Techno and Chillout / Leftfield
PLAYTIME IS FIVE
WE IS FIVE - SCREW GLASTONBURY - WE WANT CAKE!
A lot of Racing Posts have died to get Playtime this far. It started as a little thing for 120 in tiny bar off Regent St - a mixed night for male and female princesses, playing this newfangled wonky house stuff with the slogan "look normal, they must suspect nothing". Now Playtime has grown up to become the first club to bring new sounds like Claude von Stroke, Abe Duque and Mason to the UK, and a record label described as "label of the moment" by One Week to Live and "one of the best labels to come out of 2005".
In between, there's been some killer releases - little did we know that Mike Monday's 'what day is it?' was huge in Berlin when every UK producer would have killed for success there. And some astounding gigs (Abe Duque's live set with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, very early UK appearances from Sebastien Leger and Oliver Huntemann, and the insane party for the release of Mike Monday's Smorgasbord, not to mention the Fear and Loathing night with Hunter S Thompson on the door...)
But now Playtime is five, and we're ready to move on. June 22 will be our last date at the key, and Playtime moves to the Ministry main room with John Acquaviva's new night Electronic later in 2007 ... But in the meantime, who else should a mixed-up night like Playtime get for its fifth birthday but one of the most mixed-up, ambisexual, fast-talking acts around at the moment...?
FRI JUN 22
Chelonis R Jones (Get Physical - live set)
Mike Monday
Spektrum (PA)
Big Daddy
ROOM2
LUV*JAM - Coley v Dan Eds
Graeme Lloyd plus the Subbass crew:
Fabian Chui B2B Safka
Lee Perrin B2B Hannibal Soares
CHELONIS R JONES (GET PHYSICAL - LIVE SET)
WIRE magazine got it right: "Chelonis R. Jones's debut Dislocated Genius is probably Get Physical's strangest release yet... No matter how often you come back to it, the mystery always seems to recede into the distance..." But then Booka Shade got it right too: "New York drama queen epic at its best!" He's been in 23 different bands - the last called "COON" - before branching out as a solo artist on Get Physical with the hugely well-reviewed Dislocated Genius. Ambisexual, divatastic, androgynous, Chicago AND Berlin, and having done some killer work with DJ Hell on smash track "Deer in the headlights", he's about to release his latest album, CHATTERTON, based on the death of the infamous English poet Thomas Chatterton, age 17....
MIKE MONDAY
Technically he's our resident and we should list him at the end, but ... It's been a huge last year for Mike Monday. He's one of the fathers of wonky house and his 2006 debut CD, Smorgasbord, was an IDJ album of the month and an album of the year, and One Week to Live described it as "a classic". He's also now one of the UK's most successful underground touring DJs as well - playing alongside the heroes of minimal just this month at Watergate, in LA, in Amsterdam, Switzerland, at Sonar, and in Russia, and of course at Playtime. Then there's the remix album out soon - a double CD of remixes of Smorgabord and of Mike's remixes of other producers' work...
SPEKTRUM
"We all live / and die" - Kinda New was the closing track of the first playtime at the Egg, however long ago that was, and now it's been retweaked, rejigged and re-released for a new MoS release in 2007. But that's not the only electropunk string to their bow, with a new album Fun at the Gymkhana Club out now on Nonstop. As NME said, "Spektrum are to disco punk what the Neptunes are to R'n'B" - or, as WIRE put it, "Spektrum are what happens next"...
BIG DADDY
He calls himself "the head cheerleader for the Playtime scene" - but as well as running Playtime, GEEK, and those club's two record labels, he's also been doing a fair few of his own gigs, with three gigs already this year at Ministry, regular slots at Trailer Trash, Redlight and Inigo in Clapham, and a one-off gig in Sydney in March that seemed to bring out every Londoner in the entire southern hemisphere. And of course his first single is out soon, a collaboration with Dan Cheshire Cat called "Not Clever"...
LUV*JAM - Coley! v Dan Eds
It's one of those clubs - so devoted an audience it's developed its own rave language called "ONK" and so strange that you never know who's going to be the next headliner. LUV*JAM founder and resident Coley has bought everyone from Boyz Noize and Arnaud Rebotini to a Guy Called Gerald to his club in hometown Wrexham - and this time round he's bringing a coachload of Wrexham back to London for a superONK.
GRAEME LLOYD AND SUBBASS DJS -
Graeme Lloyd, Fabian Chui B2B Safka, Lee Perrin B2B Hannibal Soares.
Over the past 3 years Graeme has graced some of the biggest clubs in the world, including a residency at the Gallery as well Cream (Amnesia,Ibiza) Bora Bora (Ibiza) Pacha (London) The Cross (London) Dusted @ The Egg (London) SW4 and Electric Gardens Festivals to name just a few. But he's also the head of London's Subbass DJ academy, and so for this gig we've asked him to handpick 4 up-and-coming new talents to show off in the second room...
PLAYTIME 5TH BIRTHDAY FRI JUNE 22 - At the Key, Lazer Road Goods Yard off York Way, Kings X N1 0UZ. £12 with DSI or beatport eflyer, or taped-up glasses because we all like GEEKs. £14 for everyone else. 11PM-5AM. Nearest tube Kings X station.
LOOK NORMAL. THEY MUST SUSPECT NOTHING.
www.playtime-club.com
