- Arrived at Fabric at about 1am, met a couple of friends who were already in the line and went straight down into room 1 where Craig Richards was starting to get the crowd going. We hung out there for a while but it was feeling a little slow so we headed over to chill by room 2 where Terry Francis was handing down a much more driving kind of set .. entirely appropriate, given that Rolando was due on afterwards.
Not quite sure on timings, I think we headed back to room 1 about 2.45 thinking it was going to be the start of Ivan Smagghe's set, however it was Isolee (live) which I enjoyed immensely. I've been thoroughly rating his recent Wearemonster album, and I was a bit miffed not to catch Schrapnell, a tune I was particularly looking out - anyway not to worry, since we headed over to room 2 for ...
DJ Rolando: [i]classic[/i] detroit techno, full of rolling thunder in the basslines with sustained melodic chords tempering the pace and shifting moods - awesome. I didn't hear him drop his own classic techno gem [url=http://www.discogs.com/release/1695]'Knights of The Jaguar'[/url] (which i had been secretly hoping for ... ah well) as we left a bit before the end of his set to check out French duo Chateau Flight in room 3. Chateau Flight are perhaps best known in the mainstream for their extensive remixing work, notably Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You". All in all a very good set - the mixing was slightly off at times but the track selection was excellent - ridiculously bouncy, smile-inducing music - until about 4.50am when some kind of funky house record made an appearance. We took one look at each other and scarpered for the safety of ivan's crunchy tech in room 1. Ivan quickly had us dancing hard with his unique flavour of slightly twisted tech house.
Fortunately the crowd had started to thin out quite a bit by this stage and so there was plenty of room to dance - it was rapidly turning into one of those "unexpected" Fabric nights - one of those nights where you end up at Fabric with no prior planning (we'd only decided to go to Fabric rather than The End at midnight) - and which then surprise you by turning into a small, perfectly-formed gem of a night.
After a brief rest up on the balcony watching Ivan working the crowd, we headed back downstairs for (we thought) the last little bit of Ivan's set.
Ivan, ahh Ivan. Trust Ivan to save the best records until AFTER he was already supposed to have finished his set ... 'and then he let the acid take him' - said by a friend about a different Smagghe set - proved pretty apt for the 6am-7.30am close part of his set which was - [i]absolute quality[/i]. And unlike his last set at The End, when i felt he slightly lost the plot and let it wander a little too much, Ivan kept things altogether more focussed. Several times he started a beat pattern using strange acidic bleeps and squelches, sucking the crowd into the pattern and letting them start to dance and then spring a bassline surprise.
Hats off again Monsieur Smagghe. Like others, I had been a little disappointed by his Fabric 23 mix CD after the high expectations set by his Suck My Deck compilation. I'm glad to report that Ivan is still most definitely rocking it live.