It’s a funny thing about UK Super Clubs in Australia, the fact that we seem to know them intimately whilst never having set foot in Great Britain, let alone “ad it large” on their hallowed dance floors. Each Aussie clubber’s individual experience of the UK Super Club differs, but one thing is for sure, nowadays it’s virtually impossible to avoid the spindly, sassily-marketed reach of their A&R Teams and burgeoning record labels. I dare someone to put their hand up and honestly say there isn’t one Ministry of Sound Annual in their collection. I’m guilty as charged, but at least mine has a little old school cred – it’s the original 1995 Annual featuring gag, choke, Boy George.

Then there are the slightly more obsessive amongst us (OK, guilty as charged again) who have shelled out a week’s salary for the latest air-freighted copy of Mixmag and lost their shit over the weekly line-up at Cream or Gatecrasher. A typical Friday night £10 entry fee in the UK will net you the kind of line-up those magnanimous New Year’s Eve promoters in Sydney charge you a pound of flesh and naming right to your first born child for. When you live the sort of distance from Europe you’d struggle to save in three months’ committed saving, you end up just taking it like the bee-atch you are and proceed have nightmares about junior getting beaten for being called Renaissance Smith.

Well fortunately I have had a chance to turn the tables on this predicament and head to ol’ blighty for some much needed oppressive cold and rain, liberally interspersed with some quality clubbing action. Of course, unless you’ve been digging salt in the Gulag, you would have felt the presence of Fabric across the globe. Especially in Australia, where our breaks-fancying crowds probably know it as the spiritual home and residence for touring faves the Plump DJs and party rockers, the Stanton Warriors. Fabric opened around 5 years ago, when the dance music press was bleating on… wait, I’m dance music press, ok they were reporting on ‘the death of the super clubs’ and how underground parties were making a resurgence, ‘going back to grass roots’, ‘more of an organic dance movement’, and other assorted nauseating quips. Fabric asked these nay-sayers to cram these predictions squarely into their tradesmen’s entrances as it opened to swathe of glowing reports and an events calendar that would make you weep for the glory it beheld.

It was natural then for me to lose my shit in natural style when I beheld the Fabric 5th birthday line-up. Stanton Warriors, Plump DJs, Adam Freeland, Death in Vegas Live, Breakstra Live, the Scratch Perverts and all this for a measly 12 quid (probably close to NYE prices in Oz knowing the stupefying buying power of our mighty Aussie dollar!) Smack my ass and call me Charlie, this is what it should be about. The cream of the cream wall to wall, soup to nuts, balls to bones, large style.

Fabric the club is itself a remarkable building – like most buildings in London about, at least twice as old as anything you are likely to find back home, save for a couple of fossilized lean-tos near Humpty Doo that date back to the Cretaceous period. It’s located in Farringdon, an area just north of the city of London that was originally a huge market area for the city, selling all manner of goods shipped in from around the country and across the globe. The market spirit is still alive and well in Farringdon, as evidenced by the swotty looking gent we past between the station and the club peddling his wares. At least that’s what I though he was doing, though my friend thought he may have just been singing the Green Velvet track ‘La La Land’ as he stood there muttering “Pills, pills, pills, pills…”

Once you pass through the purposefully slow-moving check-in and cloak room (no Hillsborough disasters in this club, I wager) you are immediately lost in the best possible way in Fabric. The labyrinthine brickwork meanders its way through the smoky funk of the club’s atmosphere. Just when you think you have lost your way utterly, you find yourself in the middle of an inviting bar or a cosy alcove full of friendly faces.

It’s not that Fabric is cavernous or high, it’s just freakin’ long. You think you have seen the outer limits of the club then suddenly a new stairway or passageway leads you off into an entirely new zone of the party. Just when you’re thinking, “Where the hell am I?” you find yourself stumbling upon yet another inviting bar and saying, “Ah excellent, double vodkas all round my good man.”

The quality of music at the 5th birthday was simply mind-boggling, wall-to-wall gold. From the heaving breaks crowd in the main room, through butt-shaking funk in room2 to the balls-out block party vibe of room three, there was hardly a beat put wrong. I’m the first to point out how oddly out of place you can feel moving in between diverse music styles that simply don’t work when heard in close proximity (Big Day Out anyone?). However when each room is rocking as hard as the last, in their own inimitable way, you really do felt utterly spoilt for choice in Fabric.

For starters, you’ve got the Stanton Warriors playing the fucking ‘warm-up set’ for Christ’s sakes. At 11PM, the main dance floor is rammed. It’s the sort of rammed where you can do nothing but heave and pulse in time to the crowd. Trying to dance, whilst endeavouring not to spill my vodka, I’m sure I looked something like Keanu Reeves dodging bullets in the Matrix, but without the co-ordination or rhythm or looks or guns, but I digress. This was the mosh pit of breaks; the Stanton Warriors bestride the decks rocking the house like gods of metal; dropping beats so phat you can’t help but blow up. A tasty remix of Armand van Helden’s “My my my” had the crowd buzzing.

Typically you’d expect to have the other dance floors very much playing a support role, warming the bench, cutting oranges and offering encouragement to the ‘A’ team, but not so at Fabric. Behold the magnificent Breakstra, in their full 9-piece glory, funkin’ yo mama’s ass with considerable aplomb. Truly their wind instrument player is a modern master, dazzling the crowd with his reality defying ‘I can play two saxophones at once’ routine. What skill, what talent, what an enormous frickin’ gob he must have to not only fit two entire sax mouthpieces, but to belt out both horns simultaneously. This guy can crush walnuts with his diaphragm, I’m sure of it.

To round out the spectacle of the evening room three I witnessed a full scale old school jam session in full effect, littered with the sort of funk and soul classics you’d expect on an Andy Smith mix album. Not surprising then that the whitest man in funk sometimes calls this his London home. Definitely a wicked party vibe, a room patronized but some of the more seasoned elements of the Fabric crowd, yours truly among them.

At one point my fellow Fabric virgin friends and I were thinking the night was only half done, and we still had the Plump DJs and the Scratch Perverts to come. As Death in Vegas finished their somewhat more mellow live set in the main room, the mood in the room quickly jacked up again as Adam Freeland took to the decks. Read his biography on the Fabric website and he talks about the fact that even though he is branching out into more production work with Free*land it doesn’t prevent him from still getting all dark and tribal on yo’ ass in the main room. True to his word, Adam Freeland still knows how to rock a floor. While spinning, he has constant smirk on his face and an evil glint in his eye, as if to say, “Ha! You thought that was tasty, well have some of this!!” whilst unleashing another breaky monster on the floor. Even his own “Extraordinary” was given a prominent place mid set, meaning you can take the boy out of A&R, but you can’t take the A&R out of the boy. Go on son!

As I left Fabric in the more than capable hands of the Plumps, I turned to the listings for the coming months. Grooverider and Fabio’s regular Friday nighter featuring guests like the simply untouchable Andy C & the RAM records crew, Dave Clarke’s upcoming live set as part of the Devil’s Advocate tour, Mark Farina, Richie Hawtin, more Plumps, more Stantons, ah geez I’ve really gotta clean the drool off this keyboard. Well that’s me won – make mine a nice tall glass of Fabric please barman…

All pictures by Tim Rogers (timnotjim).