Clean & Serene @ Burdekin, Sydney (24/03/05)

There’s nothing like the first night of a long weekend to get people to loosen their trousers and head out on the town. This Easter, the final Clean and Serene at the Burdekin was all the incentive most good, clean, house-lovin’ folks needed to crank things up in a suitably carefree fashion.

Things looked special even before partygoers hit the door, with Clean and Serene’s Taz greeting the masses in slippers and a dressing gown, cigar in hand and bunny girls by his side. Inside, Adam Foster was prepping the room nicely, but while the venue was busy, the floor was still pretty bare, more due to the hour and the than the vibe of the punters. . The Burdekin is a great bar, but like so many venues in Sydney, it’s ill equipped to create the ambience of a proper house club, so the challenge for the promoters is to create some kind of club vibe. The other downside is that it puts much more pressure on the DJ’s to perform. Luckily Clean and Serene’s team have been at this a while and know how to nail that feel.

Gary Broadband relieved Adam at half eleven and started in with some deep, steppin’ tracks that warmed the place up a little and invited people to congregate near the DJ booth. Gary’s Monkey Tennis partner, Lummy joined him soon after for their classic team routine. The lads bounced tracks off each other for an hour and a half, Gaz dropping the warmer, housier tracks while Lummy kept things percussive and upbeat. It was a shame their set was cut a little short, but unfortunately for the whole crew the night had been shortened by the venue itself.

As one of the founders of Clean and Serene, no one knows better how to work his peeps than Jackster, and the venue came alive for him. Dropping fatter tunes, thick basslines, the occasional breakbeat interlude, judicious use of DJ trickery and plenty of latin overtones brought the C&S crew to their feet in droves. Co-founder (and housemate) Taz aimed for a more melodic, driving feel with hints of his love of housier prog flavours, which, despite the current hipster hoohah, ain’t a bad thing at all. The crowd were hooked ‘til the lights came on. Mike’s closing set continued where the others left off and concluded the night with a mixed bag of tricks.

The wonderful thing about house music is that you can – and should – feel free to bring in elements of other genres. I’m sure that the house purists would have been foaming at the mouth with some of the genre-mashing going down, but that’s the point. Proper club nights are an opportunity to both influence and entertain. Give ‘em what they want, with bits of what they should want. Where does deep house begin, and at what point does it become disco, soul, or prog, or tech? Clean and Serene’s DJ’s took risks that paid off and given the confines of the venue, was an admirable and gutsy thing to do.  It doesn’t happen enough. Here’s to more Clean and Serene, wherever, whenever, however.