Club Review : Fine form and filth from Frantic

Hard House Academy,

Where: O2 Academy Brixton,London

When: Sat 17 October 2009

Oh what a gloriously anticipated, long awaited night out for those of us veterans of the hard house scene who no longer manage to pound between Birmingham , Leeds and Bournemouth for our clubfix every week. Bastions of the game such as we now tend to pick just a few of the premier dates on the clubbing calendar to splurge on – and this one was of the biggies. 

Now in its ninth year of action, the Hard House Academy is held annually by London's premier hard house events company Frantic, at Brixton Academy – now given the corporate branding treatment and named the O2 Academy, Brixton, sob – and presents four floors of music, with around 50 DJs playing one-hour sets to tout their finest skills. It's always been a legendary night, hot, packed and traditionally smoky. This year, of course, the smoke was all gone (I noticed bouncers exasperatedly chasing a few of the more determined clubbers out of nooks and crannies and prising roll-ups from their hands...) and so, bizarrely was most of the furniture, replaced by dodgy faux chests and plastic boxes. However, aside from a few confusing signs up that belie the Academy's day job as a gig venue (no cameras? present tickets when you go through these doors? Red Bull £2? I don't think so....) it remains the glamorous, stunning clubbing Mecca it always was.

Admirably, there wasn’t a queue when I arrived at peak time, though I have heard horror stories of people waiting two hours in the ticket queue at the side door, rather than being allowed in through the main entrance. Turnout was also good; while not as packed as previous years, everyone looked good and there was a wicked Halloween theme with a fantastic array of harlequin clown and ghoul looks. Girls’ dressing-up style has changed over the last year or so, with the neon cyber look replaced by an equally stunning showgirl slash punk glamour effect – lots of corsets and chains but still plenty of leg on show above the ubiquitous fluffy boots. The atmosphere was also more forgiving, with lower temperatures and less club-smog destroying makeup and hair. 

The tricky part this year was the music. Frantic is a huge fan of hardstyle at the moment, those industrial, euro-born drilling noises favoured by names like Alex Kidd, Cally and Juice, Proteus, and for those of you who listen to Radio 1, Kutski. Puritans wouldn’t slap it in a genre with hard house; it's new and has dropped the rolling basslines, trance leads and euphoric buildups and kick-ins of hard trance and hard house, in the most part at least. 

However, like it or not, it's Frantic's big baby at the moment and so most of the main room sets at HHA this year were hardstyle. Sadly, that meant anyone who couldn't cope with feeling like their head was being smashed in with a pneumatic drill was banished from the stunning lasers and huge space of the main arena and its balcony. When I stuck my head in the door from time to time I heard Cally Gage playing some rather cool hardcore-infused tunes in between slamming into hardstyle tracks while a writhing dancer slash MC did his thing on the stage; and Andy Whitby going full pelt hardstyle to a chorus of “ere we f*&^ing go”. Sorry folks but that was my limit. The highlight to this floor that I did manage to see was of course Phil Reynolds, who played his trademark soaring hard trance from 2-3am and was on fantastic form.

However, my friends and I had seen the lineup before arriving so were prepared for what to expect, and we were emphatically there for the Filth Foyer – immediately opposite the main doors, behind the staircases, there was a superb little setup where clubbers could get within three feet of their favourite DJs. Hosted by Adam M's northern name Hi Oktane, it was a DREAM lineup by any hard house aficionados' standard, with Dave Curtis, Matt Pickup & Andy Rise, Lucy Fur, Andy Whitby (not playing hardstyle), Adam M and finally Andy Farley and Paul Glazby back to back. 

Filth is that super-dirty hard and fast hard house style born of the NRG movement and led by DJs like RR Fierce, Marc Johnson, Paul Glazby, Paul Janes, Dom Sweeton, Justin Bourne, Ben Stevens, Frank Farrell and many more. It's high energy, high impact, knock-your-socks-off music that keeps ratcheting up the tempo and barely pauses for breath. And we got eight glorious hours of it at HHA.

That wasn't the only treat for us, though. It took a bit of finding, but by winding our way up an impossibly secretive pile of staircases we came to a hidden room where a pair of vinyl decks were set up and DJs were hammering out everything from trance to old skool bounce! With the progression to digital music-buying, the only vinyls on the scene these days are those in older collections and date from up to about two to three years ago. That meant the DJs dragged out a huge list of classics and originals – and made for an extremely popular floor. The lineup there opened with Adam Symbiosis, followed by Skol, Rodi Style, Kevsey D b2b with Aaron James, Gordon Darley, Mike Avery b2b Discam, Jimbean b2b Mat G and Beany b2b Double G.

Finally, floor number four, the rather cool upstairs foyer area, was superbly comfortable, with carpets, seats AND a bar within staggering distance, was playing Euro hardstyle....stuff. Pretty hardstyley, pretty noisy and not one I really paused for thought in – although the legend that is Mark EG was topping the bill there. 

So, to the performances. On arrival, we caught Adam Symbiosis on the vinyls, dropping absolute prime-era anthems by Stimulant DJs (F*ck Da Beats) and Prime Mover (Feel What I Feel) to close his set. We then hit the Foyer dancefloor at around 11pm to find Dave Curtis pushing some phat and bouncy hard house into filth. He got the place roaring by playing the BK remix of Tony de Vit’s R U All Ready, which makes for excellent dancefloor fodder. 

At midnight he handed over to JP and Jukesy who opened with some amazing bouncy filthy hard house tracks and laid down some all time classics including Legend B's Lost in Love, Pockock - Mystic Man, and Badass. A really popular set, the crowd cheered and stomped like mad.

Pickup and Rise – the two exuberant Northerners that have had a meteoric rise over the last four years on the back of some serious bounce sounds – took over and put on a real rave show, including leaping onto the deck stand to stand and yell over the crowd during one particularly long, synthy lead, and crashing through their remix of the Cardigans' My Favourite Game. They made time for some longer breakdowns and leads into their tunes too, which made for a nice change of tone in the night as a whole.

Meanwhile, on a dancefloor far far away (yup, there were an awful lot of stairs up to that vinyl floor...) we discovered the legend that is Skol playing frankly the most brilliant selection of bounce classics I've heard in years.  He definitely gets the “hero of the night” trophy (well he would, if there was one). We loved him. He's a Londoner, he's played alongside names like Billy Daniel Bunter and Roosta at the Tasty nights, and at Just Groove, Club 414 nights and Sundayz. He's fantastic.

Back on the filth floor, Lucy Fur was up and I won't deny that she's a bit of a favourite of ours. With an impeccable track selection and seriously hard tastes, she got the 2-3am set to hit the decks with some real filth. She mixed it up between harder and faster styles and some bouncier stuff, slamming Frank Farrell and Riggsy’s mix of Beatniqz - Kick It into the middle of her set. 

She handed on to Andy Whitby, who came out to play a full-on filth set following his hour of hardstyle on the main floor. He proved he's still an excellent DJ in the hard house genre too, and chopped and cut up the tracks in his usual flamboyant style.

Finally, at 4am all pretence of soft behaviour vanished as Adam M played an uber-hard, fast and filthy set. A top producer in the hard school with releases on labels such as Vicious Circle, Flashpoint, Nosebleed, Spinball and his own label, Oktane Records, he's also the man behind Hi Oktane events. He thrashed it, we loved it, but he was only warming up for the masters, really – Andy Farley and Paul Glazby, who took the final set. 

Those two can be credited with creating much of the harder appeal in hard house and have taken the genre from a pioneering but marginalised sound to an ultra-professional, slick and enormously productive and prolific part of the hard dance movement, with a huge following of professional and up and coming producers and DJs to its stable. These guys played to a packed floor of cheering fans, and put on a fantastic show. 

The only regret is that they couldn't get the main floor – Glazby and Farley are legends, larger than life, and would have brought the house down had they have been given the main room. You do have to wonder what was going through the Frantic bods’ minds – “oh its fine, they won’t want much space because after all they don’t make much noise and won’t draw a huge crowd…”??? The consolation of course was that the crash barriers in the Foyer were only three feet from the DJs so we could see every move they made, which made it all worthwhile.

When they finally kicked us out, it was time to trip onto the afterparty at Hidden in Stockwell. With two rooms and Rob Tissera on the lineup, it was almost as good as the main event – who could bear to miss the megastar Robbie T with his perfect smile? Not me. Despite the infuriating queue to get in, Hidden was snug, dark and warm and provided both a Frantic (hard dance) and a Twist floor (hard house/filth) for the punters. The dancefloor jumped as Simon Qudos opened the Frantic floor at 6am, playing Time to Burn 2009, his track made with Greg Brookman and his awesome new tune Ascension Protocol (also dropped by Phil Reynolds in the main room!) before ending with Guyver's Man on the Moon as he handed over to the rather beautiful Caz Wood. Robbie T was caught playing his all time classic The Day Will Come (we love him until the end of time for this) again, and Alex Mac & Zeebra Kid soon followed. All the DJs kept a massive dancefloor going and the atmosphere was entirely fantastic, a perfect end to the night.

The overall sense from chatting to people at both the main event and the afterparty was that many of them were oldies, who don’t get out so much but do shell out for this event because of the nostalgia. So you end up drawing the conclusion that Frantic doesn’t actually need to push new sounds or controversial acts to sell this event- people would prefer it if they didn’t mess with the established formula, and gave them a banging night with the scene’s biggest acts. 

So while I definitely loved being back and dancing, I felt Frantic seemed to be working harder than it needed to…..

Just for the interest, I've since checked the Frantic DSI page and have just a few quotes left by clubbers from the night:

AUDIO FREAK DJ: ...I'm so glad we did make it as it's put the hard house vibe back in my soul. It has got to be up there with one of the best HHA's I've been to and I've done most of them.

The production was insane... Lights, lasers and the massive screens were an awesome touch and the sound was crystal clear just how it should be and the music it was a good mix across all the rooms. Didn't really pay to much attention to the line up and who was playing but I do know I was in for pick up and rise who stormed it and also LED which is a first as I'm not a fan of hardstyle, also got the end of kutski who was tearing up the dance floor just a we arrived so a good way to start the night.

SKUNK PUNK: Why the f*ck is this event called "Hard House" Academy? I appreciate that Frantic are backing Hardstyle in a big way and granted a few of the Hardstyle acts were amazing. But having the main room as a predominantly Hardstyle line up seems just a little more than misleading, the foyers music was off the hook and very over packed at some points.

Adam M played an absolutely blinding set!!! It was my first time at HHA and had a superb night good work to all involved, obviously Frantic have made a conscious decision to move towards Hardstyle dominated nights I just hope that you uphold the fundamental description of an event name and put all those headline Hard House acts in the main room, or just call it HA.

CATNIP: I was really pleasantly surprised at the what I thought much friendlier atmosphere this year despite showing up half naked -and by about 2/3 in the morning had got quite used to doors being opened for me, and a really pleasant chatty crowd (and no, I haven't turned into a proper fatty over the past 12 months ;) )

MINXI-MERECAT: ah my god thank you for a bangin night!!!! i had a good old stomp most of the night!! didn't want it to end!!!! xxxx

Verdict:

DJ locations and set times: 7/10 

Venue: 7/10 – loses points for having evil bar staff that refused to hand over the tops for water bottles all night thus forcing most people to pour half their drinks on other dancers

Music: 10/10 excluding hardstyle (personal preference, am sure the hardstyle fans would give their floor a 10/10 too....)

Atmosphere: 9/10 

Useful links:

www.franticdsi.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frantic/9115780151?v=info#/pages/Frantic/9115780151?v=wall

http://www.myspace.com/djadamm

http://www.dontstayin.com/parties/vicious-circle

http://www.andywhitby.com/

http://www.myspace.com/jpandjukesy

http://simonqudos.co.uk/

http://www.myspace.com/toolboxdjlucyfur

Words: Alison Lock

Images: Vickie Parker