Laundry feat. Tommie Sunshine & Kraymon @ Chinese Laundry, Sydney (26/11/05)
Chinese Laundry is now a Sydney institution. It’s a club where you can go on a Friday or Saturday night and be assured of some wicked music, regardless of your personal preference in music. If you hang about upstairs (Sand Bar) you’ll be given a solid serving of funk and breaks, whilst the two rooms downstairs offer solid jackin house and a mish mash of electro, breaks and tech madness in the Laundry and Cave respectively. So if you’re in the mood for relaxing with a bit of booty-shakin, then upstairs is for you. If you really want to give those new dancing shoes a workout, then either of the two rooms downstairs will be entirely suitable. Add to that a friendly, lively and good looking crowd (and staff), and you’ve got a very nice night out. Oooh…. Oohhh, I almost forgot. The headliners… How a club can manage to consistently get outstanding headliners is beyond me. If you’ve seen any of my recent reviews you’ll be more than aware of the quality of the line ups this place is seeing. Big props to Jam music for taking Sydney’s music scene to new and better places. Just stop in to the Laundry on any given Friday or Saturday and you’ll see what I mean.
Arriving at 10.30 on Saturday I was able to hear the arse-end of Matt Nugent’s party hip hop and breaks set in the Sand Bar. My posse and I grabbed a few drinks and made our way to the beer garden and had a chat. I noticed that already the place was already jam-packed. In fact, I would probably say it’s the busiest I’ve seen in a long, long time. I also noticed that Matt was playing a quality set that was a bit harder than you’d usually hear upstairs, and the crowd was loving it. Following on from Matt was Hook N Sling – and with it continued the quality music on a strong breaks tip – but still maintaining that fresh, funky feel that really gets you in the mood for some dancing.
At about 12 I went for a bit of a wander to check out some of the other talent on show in the Laundry and the Cave. Tim Boffa’s set had just finished and the floor was already rammed to near-capacity. I think this was due to another of Tim’s cranking sets, as well as in anticipation of the next man to the plates, the one and only Jeff Drake. Having had little exposure to Jeff’s music I was keen to see what all the hype was about. I can say with confidence that Jeff played one of the best sets I’ve seen in the Laundry. Not only did he play music that we wanted to hear (including massive tunes like Red Carpet’s “Alright” , and the DJ Flex remix of “Believe”) as well as some fresh new stuff, his mixing was undeniably top notch and he really knew how to work the crowd into a frenzy. By the end of his set he had people completely losing it and wanting to shake his hand and give him high fives. Clearly it wasn’t just me who got into his set! Absolutely one of the best sets I’ve witnessed in the Laundry, I hope to see him play again sometime soon.
While Jeff’s set was awesome, I couldn’t help but keep running back into the Cave where Gus Da Hoodrat & Jamie Doom (the Bang Gang boys) were also destroying the floor with an awesome set filled with some tech influenced electro and breakbeat insanity. The crowd in the Cave, as per usual, were going nuts to a quality set by two of Sydney’s nicest and most talented DJs. Happy to take my mate’s drunken request for Mylo’s remix of Freeform Five’s “No More Conversation”, the lads gave the perfect warm up for USA’s Tommie Sunshine. As always, the Bang Gang lads were simply remarkable.
I surprised myself on Saturday for a number of reasons, the first being that I actually had the energy to go out (but that’s another story). The other thing that surprised me was that I hadn’t heard of Tommie Sunshine before. I usually have my ear pretty close to the ground in terms of tech and electro, but I must have missed this one. I was unsure what I was going to be in for as the 6-foot-something Tommie walked into the Cave sporting a dark suit, a dark shirt and a tie, hiding behind a massive mane of curly dark hair and some amazingly dark sunglasses… As it happened, I was in for some something very special.
His set was unique in so many ways, starting with tune selection, but not discounting his amazing use of effects and on-the-fly editing. Talk about knowing how to build a crowd up. Watching Tommie was awe-inspiring. He played a couple of tracks that I recognised, but they were so cut up with other stuff that all you got was a strong sense of “Holy shit, I need to dance more!” Playing a two-hour set, he managed to keep the Cave rammed the entire time with a bunch of great people who were over the moon about the quality of his tune selection and skills. As 4am came rolling in, it was time for the Laundry to shut down. However, so enchanted by Tommie, the crowd was begging for more. And when I say begging, I mean there was an entire room full of punters shouting for “one more”, over and over. In the end, security was requested to come and help move people out for the night. This would be one of the biggest “one more” reactions I have ever seen. And it was well-deserved too in my opinion.
In the shorts bursts I had checking out the other areas from 2 onwards, I saw that the breaks genius Kraymon had the crowd going wild in the Sand Bar and from what I could see, Toby Neal played a massive closing set in the Laundry. So all in all a superb night out. I have for so long complained that the Sydney scene had nothing on the Melbourne, but slowly with the help of places like Laundry we a getting to a place I want to see in Sydney – a place with quality, intelligent music with a no-attitude, no-pretence clubbing environment. Awesome stuff. Absolutely awesome stuff!
