Club Club feat. Micky Slim & Mark Brown @ Chinese Laundry, Sydney (12/07/08)
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a big night out on the town, and even longer since I’ve been to Chinese Laundry. I have always had a soft spot for the place and was a regular for a number of years during the Good Vibrations days several years back. So beckoned by a mate’s farewell, I was excited by the prospect of heading back to the old haunt, cracking out the dancing shoes and having some brews with the crew.
I’ve never been one to beat around the bush, so I’ll get straight to the point… Either Saturday was just an off night, or the place has gone downhill quite a bit since I last enjoyed time there. It’s looking like my dancing shoes just don’t fit me the way they used to, because I left with a bit of niggle…. Figuratively speaking of course. I arrived at some point to a pretty massive line snaking halfway up the stairs, and was lucky enough to be able to sneak to the front due to my reviewer’s rights. This was probably the highlight of the night, which is a little bit depressing in hindsight. But security was friendly, and the line seemed to be moving quickly enough.
The place was really quite full all night, full of a different crowd than I remember from way back when – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, now is it? But it was definitely a source of frustration for me during the evening. I witnessed what I perceived to be some pretty rough behaviour; I saw a couple of altercations and a fight out the back at closing, which put a dampener on the evening. At times it was difficult to walk from one room to another because people were quite aggressive… At one point my mate accidentally bumped into a couple of guys as we were squeezing past, and in response they started pushing him around. I had to step in and ask them to chill out, apologise on behalf of my friend for my friend bumping into them and move everyone on. It just didn’t feel friendly.
In terms of the music, I had a bit of a groove in the Laundry room to international visitors Mickey Slim and Mark Brown (one part of MYNC). But ultimately, it was below the standard that we’d expect from DJ/producers of their calibre. The tunes were far from groundbreaking and it was all quite disjointed; a bit of a sad electro-pop mashup that never really took us anywhere. It seemed a little like a ‘Top 100 Electro-Trash Countdown’ type of scenario that had been hastily thrown together; but the crowd seemed like they were having fun, and at the end of the day that definitely goes a long way. I had a brief wander around to the cave to catch Robbie Lowe after 2am and was impressed (as usual) by the tunes from the tougher end of the house spectrum that he was throwing down. But unfortunately the crowd was a little sparser in the Cave, so Robbie’s efforts didn’t get the appreciation they deserved.
Eventually I took myself back upstairs to the garden, and while it sued to close at midnight, it’s now open all evening, which gives you a great space to go and chill with a couple of beers. The lines were moving slowly at the bar, but the friendly staff were great as always. There’s still fun to be had at Club Club, but I found myself quite disappointed in both the music selections and the crowd. Maybe this is what it takes to fill a room during the cold winter months, but this wasn’t the Laundry that I remembered for its support of cutting-edge sounds where you’d be guaranteed to hear dope sounds in every space; not in the main room at least, where it was another Sydney club playing typical Sydney music. My experience wasn’t really in line with Laundry’s reputation for being Sydney’s leading venue for underground electronic music; maybe I just attended on a bad night, but if I wasn’t writing a review then I wouldn’t really have much to say about Club Club at Chinese Laundry.
drumrunner says...
Stay in the Cave. Always ;)