Chapter

01

In Residence

fabric, London

Celebrating 12 of the world's best dance floors

In 2016, RA's In Residence series is celebrating club culture by throwing a month of parties at 12 of the world's best clubs. Clubs are the beating heart of dance music, and these are the venues that keep their local scenes thriving. Week-in, week-out, they open their doors to play the music we love.

As we settle in for a month at each of the clubs, we'll be running features that, through a combination of different media, aim to provide lasting documents of these iconic spaces.

fabric is, simply, one of the best nightclubs there has ever been. Arguably no other club has done so much, for so long, and influenced so many people. It's almost crazy when you write it down. Two weekly parties. Three rooms. Up to 1500 people. For 17 years. This is testament to an incredibly dedicated team of people and an unshakable commitment to pushing things forward.

Of course, our In Residence parties won't actually take place at fabric. The club has just emerged from its most turbulent chapter, following its closure in August, an ensuing court battle, and Islington council's eventual decision to allow it to reopen in January. It's almost certain this decision would not have been reached if it weren't for the outpouring of public support fabric received. There are many reasons why so many people rallied behind saving fabric these past few months, but at the root of it was a collective realisation that fabric represented the very essence of club culture.

Dec 17 RA in Residence: fabric in collaboration with The Hydra, Studio Spaces E1, London feat. Jeff Mills, Craig Richards b2b Ben UFO, James Ruskin b2b Blawan, Head High, DJ Stingray, Ancient Methods (live), dBridge, SAOIRSE

Chapter

02

Key info

fabric at a glance

01
Address
77A Charterhouse Street, London, UK
02
Club opened
1999
03
Soundsystem
Martin Audio, Pioneer
04
Capacity
1500
05
Resident DJs
Craig Richards, Terry Francis
06
Music policy
Underground electronic music

Chapter

03

History

London's finest

It's a truism to say that fabric isn't like other clubs. We know already that it occupies a unique place in London's nightlife ecosystem, that it has a rare level of international recognition for a club of its type, and that it's very dear to many, many people—something made clear by the controversy surrounding its closure this year. But there are certain clubs and club nights that it does resemble in spirit. Speaking with the team in fabric's office as they prepare for the announcement of their reopening in January, a feeling gradually emerges: this is less like the office of a clubbing mega-brand, and more like one of those long-running mainstays of UK clubbing, like Slam/Pressure in Glasgow or Back To Basics in Leeds.

This is a close-knit organisation of people for whom club culture is less vocation than obsession. Over and over again, in different contexts, the word "family" is used to describe how fabric operates, both internally and in its relationships with regular DJs. Logistics manager Kimi Otsuka, five years into working at fabric, says, "I've never before worked in a company where I've genuinely liked every single person, I've actually wanted to spend time with them, but here it's different." Promotions manager and talent booker Judy Griffith, who's been at the heart of things since the early days in 1999, isn't really joking when she says, "I think the reason I don't have a partner is because I'm married to the club."

While the team are gratified by all the emotional and material support they've received, they certainly aren't enjoying the attention that's come their way in their battle against closure. Andy Blackett speaks for many when he says, "I've always been a background person." Though he and his colleagues take pride in what fabric represents, their emphasis is always on how it operates—weekend-in, weekend-out—and never on any big splash they've made or the effects of this on the wider world. All they want is to get the party underway again, and keep it rolling without any more interruptions.

This is not just "messaging," or an attempt to put forward a good image of the club. While of course there's a cautiousness over words, a lot of concern about the precariousness of the situation, and general self-consciousness after all the scrutiny, it's easy to tell what's heartfelt. These are people who are exhausted and punch-drunk, who've been uncertain of their employment or officially unemployed for the last three months. The club's founder, Keith Reilly, is apologetic, but says he can't face another interview after so much public heart-bearing. In all of their weary faces and tones, even when they're talking about things they're proud of, you can see that dedication to duty is a double-edged sword. Even without the tragic deaths at the club, and the wrangles with the authorities and lengthy closure that ensued, being "married to the club" is intensely demanding. It takes a special kind of devotion to night-time culture from everyone involved to keep an institution like fabric running.

This story begins long before 1999. Reilly was a music fanatic and had been running parties since the late '70s—he used to manage a trucking company and had access to empty warehouses—but it was actually his more business-minded brother, Billy, who first got into clubs. Spotting the queues outside Bagleys in Kings Cross, Billy acquired the smaller space next door and opened Canvas in 1993, initially intending for it to be a pre-club bar to cash in on passing trade. When it was granted a late license, though, Canvas got sucked into '90s clubbing at its peak of shiny shirts, fluffy bras and superstar DJs. Keith had been planning to do the same even before 1993, but was always more absorbed in the music, and less in the nuts and bolts of how venues work. In the end, he was able to watch and learn from Billy, helping out with his flyers and publicity, getting the lay of the land, before finally he found the space that would be fabric.

For anyone who has only come to London recently, this will be hard to imagine, but in the late '90s, the area of Farringdon around Smithfield Market was desolate. There were a lot of empty and run-down Victorian warehouses and industrial buildings, leaving it forbidding to visitors at night. Nonetheless, its proximity to the financial district of The City led to developers and investors sniffing around. One proposed development was a steak restaurant called Smiths. Doing the due diligence for the investors of this project was Cameron Leslie, who met Keith Reilly as he was looking at the former meat storage space under the restaurant for possible use as a club.

Leslie had been "an electronic music fan from a very early age," and a keen clubber while he studied hospitality in Brighton in the early '90s—"The Zap, The Escape, those seafront clubs... it was one of those ecosystems that's always had its own little culture and I absolutely loved it." Being serious about business, though, he never considered getting into that world. Instead, he used his degree to get into the hotel industry, where he learned how customer experience was engineered right up to the five-star level, then moved on to working for Deloitte, a consultancy firm advising businesses at every stage of their development. Though he didn't realise it at the time, he was amassing experience that could be applied to nightlife just as easily as any other part of hospitality and entertainment.

Between the mercurial Reilly and the more grounded Leslie, something sparked, and a business partnership began that is still functioning two decades on. "It was bloody hard," says Leslie, "a really twisty path, just to get to the point where I came on board. After that it was a bit more linear, but it was still not easy." Reilly was thoroughly involved with the club scene by this point, and had a strong vision for how the place would operate. This wouldn't be about the glitz that clubs like Canvas represented. The focus would be on the sound and the dance floor, with relatively underground DJs Craig Richards and Terry Francis brought in as residents, not because their names looked impressive on flyers, but because they were plugged into London's scene. Likewise, it was decided that fabric would rep drum & bass, even though it was out of fashion at the time, because Reilly knew that it still retained an ultra-loyal following.

It took them a couple of false starts, and having to recruit Leslie's dad to run the cloakroom (which he ended up doing for three months), before they got started. Serious drug dealers tried to muscle in almost as soon as the doors were open; it's well-documented that the Reilly brothers' extended family were feared in London's criminal underworld, but Keith chose to work with the police and face down the threats rather than allow a gang war to start on his behalf, breaking up his own marriage and barely retaining his sanity in the process. Despite Reilly's musical roots and Leslie's hospitality know-how, it's not clear that they truly knew what they were doing. Somehow, though, among the chaos, a mission and a sense of shared values came together.

There were plenty of people on board from the beginning who exemplified this. Shaun Roberts, for example, started as part of the flyering team and ended up programming Friday nights, remaining a key part of the fabric staff until 2015, only to return as a volunteer to help steer the #savefabric campaign. And perhaps more than anyone, Judy Griffith, who remains a lynchpin of the operation, is one of those people you could scarcely imagine in any other job, a personification of club life who lives, breathes, eats and sleeps the culture. She is a self-confessed "DJ junkie—never a DJ groupie, just a complete junkie for knowing who every DJ is, what they're playing and where they're playing." Even now, she goes out two or three times during the week in addition to her days in the office and nights looking after the DJs at fabric.

Griffith was a true acid house convert. Already a keen clubber at the end of the '80s, she imagined she'd just work in her secure banking job all week and then dance to northern soul, indie, rare groove and whatever else at the weekend. But when acid house hit, like so many others, she was fired up by "doing things for yourself, just making it happen rather than waiting for establishments to do things," and after a couple of years raving, took redundancy from the bank and ran off to work in Ibiza. Through absolute immersion, and her thirst for knowledge, she gradually made herself an asset to clubs she worked with, and by the time she got back to London she was able to start working for important labels like Strictly Rhythm.

In 1999, she started working for Home, the other major club that opened in London that year. She didn't like it, and felt working for a club cramped her style as someone who wanted to be going to other venues. But when her friend Nicky Smith asked her to help out at fabric, she came on as her assistant, only imagining it would be for a few months. Griffith laughs as she remembers the moment in her interview with Reilly and Leslie when she scoffed at the idea of booking Judge Jules, who was then the epitome of the superstar DJ. She thought she'd blown it, then realised they were on the same wavelength. "We so clicked, all of us, musically, and it was just such a breath of fresh air at this time when everything was super, super, super, super: super club, superstar DJs, super-sized everything, super-sized egos especially. But they wanted music that I actually cared about."

The tone was set. This was a place for people with diverse tastes that converged on those parts of underground music that transcended hype. No big names or sexy girls on the flyers, instead artwork that enticed and intrigued. As such, fabric was immediately popular and managed to ride out the early 2000s doldrums that club culture found itself in as that "super-sized everything" bubble burst. "It was far from smooth running, though" says Leslie. "Opening day is only ever just the beginning, and you don't ever sit back and think, 'Brilliant, we're doing really well.' You might have a moment where you think, 'That's worked, that's brilliant, that's really pleasing, everything's come together,' but you're also going to be thinking, 'Well, we could have done that better, that should have been better,' and it's that constant evolution of moving on to the next thing until suddenly it's, 'Bloody hell, where's 17 years gone?'"

That might just seem like a stern boss's working methods, but it's an accurate depiction of how fabric has been throughout its existence. There have been major shifts: the launch of the mix CD series in 2001 and the Houndstooth label in 2013, and the expansion into opening a sister club, matter, which closed in 2010 and nearly brought fabric down with it. But in the main there has been a "suck it and see" approach to each development, with most of the important changes being incremental rather than transformational.

fabric

Leslie characterises the processes that drive fabric's evolution this way: "You've got a really strong two-sided brain in this company. You've got an incredibly strong operational and military-style delivery team, and then you've got a very strong creative and booking and musical and blue-sky team, so trying to get those two halves of the brain to work together… there's a constant state of friction sometimes between the two." Dramatic decisions rarely drive anything, especially when it comes to music policy. The gradual improvements to the soundsystem and lights; the emergence of Fabriclive as a banner for the Friday nights; Fabriclive's evolution from breaks and drum & bass to take in dark garage (they hosted FWD>> sessions as early as 2001), dubstep, grime, then every other bass-led subdivision of London sounds—all of these developments came through a process of testing the waters and seeing what happened.

fabric grabbed outfits like Dub Police, Rinse, Tectonic, Hyperdub and Butterz with both hands, in turn leading to significant subcultural documents like Caspa & Rusko's FabricLive 37 at the end of 2007, or Logan Sama's FabricLive 83 last year. But there's no sense they were jumping on a genre because it was hip. As Keith Reilly told Vice in 2014: "We never try and spot trends, never try and second guess what's going to be popular and never ever put on an artist we don't believe in. That's a mug's game." Leslie says that this was something they held up during their licensing hearings. "It's something I feel really proud of in terms of the way we've incubated scenes and tried to support them and haven't just jumped on them and chucked them aside after they've served a purpose for a period of time, but actually kept them going."

At the heart of all the musical developments, though, has been the slow-moving river of house and techno on Saturday nights. Terry Francis and Craig Richards may have emerged from the streams known as "tech house" and "prog house" respectively, but via their own extended sets, and through the talent that Richards—along with Judy Griffith and more recently Andy Blackett—has brought into the club over the years, they've plugged into a much deeper European underground than either of those tags would suggest. Griffith alludes to the gradual maturing of fabric in discussing the now yearly 24-hour birthday party, which began with the tenth birthday in 2009. "In the early days," she says, "it was almost impossible to find somewhere to go to after fabric closed, and even the first couple of times we opened all day we'd struggle a bit in the daytime. But now people get it much more, there are lots of carry-on sessions, and London is way more of a 24-hour city."

That's a point worth remembering, given how easy it is to be gloomy about London clubbing's evolution in the 2000s. We may no longer have The Cross, Canvas, Bagleys, Turnmills, Plastic People or The End, which were all running when fabric opened—and, which Leslie says, "weren't competition but made it feel like being part of a strong group of clubs"—but there is XOYO, Phonox, Corsica Studios, The Hydra, Oval Space, Bloc, the Bussey Building, Ministry Of Sound and many others, as well as the untold number of small spots running through the weekend that Griffith alludes to. Many of those clubs came to fabric's aid during its recent problems. As head of communications Kirsti Weir puts it: "Their support enabled us to keep going. I mean, because there's a feeling they could be next, they were sort of ready to get behind us, and now I think we've got a very nice sense of community."

The feeling in the office now is, obviously, one of uncertainty. In the heat of the licensing battle, it's clear people on all sides felt backed into a corner and forced to defend their position. Even though the reopening has been announced, the air is far from clear. Andy Blackett says, "It's a case of, 'When does the finger pointing stop?'—and admittedly we have done some finger pointing ourselves—and, 'When does the cohesive approach start?'" Leslie refers repeatedly to the club's once-healthy relationship with the police, and wearily says his greatest hope is that this can now be rebuilt. There is cautious optimism that the London mayor, Sadiq Kahn, his night tsar, Amy Lamé, and City Hall's culture department will be able to act as a buffer between clubs, police and the council. Regarding concerns that Lamé's role is only symbolic, Leslie emphatically says, "It's important to look at the broader makeup of the team there to understand exactly how many people are behind the scenes doing certain things. There's many more roles than just hers."

Whatever happens, there's a fierce collective belief that fabric still stands for what it always did: diverse tastes converging on the underground sounds that form the core of the club. The individual members of the team personify this, and are as keen to nerd out on music as to discuss the club. Logistics manager Kimi Otsuka's first love is post-punk, new wave and minimalist electronics. Kirsti Weir came up as DJ and blogger through the heads-down techno of the Plex collective. Technical manager Keith Reynolds came of age in the rave heat of Edinburgh's Pure night. Houndstooth manager Rob Booth is deeply rooted in out-there electronica, as evidenced by his Electronic Explorations mix series, and most recently by the insane array of talent he marshalled in record time for the 111-track #savefabric compilation.

If there's one connecting thread for all of them, it's the devotion to Craig Richards' place at the heart of fabric. Blurring the boundaries between Saturday's techno and Friday's diversity, as comfortable playing with Ben UFO as he is Ricardo Villalobos: somehow he seems to be at the centre of everyone's favourite fabric moments.

It's impossible to speak to these people for long and maintain any cynicism about what fabric is. Of course it is a commercial business, and out of necessity will never provide certain things that a grubby rave can. And yes, it's a shame that other club closures—The Arches in Glasgow, for example—haven't had the attention that fabric's trials have. But to write off the upwelling of support and the sense of shared purpose that's been in evidence across London and beyond this year would be a terrible shame. That we moved from #savefabric to #saveourculture is no small thing. And seeing the slightly delirious, sleep-deprived dedication on the fabric staff's faces as they prepare for a risky future, and hearing their reasons for doing so, we can only hope that the motivating principles of club culture are given as much attention as the nitty-gritty of licensing hearings, searches, drug policy and ID scanners are.

fabric may be unique in its particular history, but the sense that this is "our culture," and the solidarity that has emerged, are a reminder that its values are those that have motivated clubbers since time immemorial. Perhaps we should leave the final word to fabric's staff themselves.

Weir: "You get to the point where you're relaxed. You're in an environment that you feel, you've got the edge off from the week. You can feel a bit anxious and shy but you just end up in this quite open, free state. That's how I've made my lifelong friends, really close friends—through clubs and music—and it's not a fickle relationship either. That's what makes your life, once you have those friendships."

Leslie: "In this campaign to save fabric, even if people aren't necessarily fabric-goers, they've been passionate about the loss of a venue that presents electronic music and that's inherently part of the scene. With people that go out to these kind of venues and listen to this kind of music, there's so much respect and love and enjoyment from people that go out and behave well, that the loss of an institution that provides that is something for people to be genuinely upset and angry about."

Griffith: "That's why our culture is so important, because we are providing a platform for people. People tell me their stories, and I've heard so much, especially during the time that this closure has happened to us. People keep coming to us and going, 'Do you know what? I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if it wasn't for you guys.' Not just DJs and promoters, but writers, people working in TV, all kinds of people who wouldn't have taken a chance on doing what they wanted if it wasn't for coming to fabric and places like this."

Chapter

04

The team behind fabric

in pictures

Chapter

05

Character profile

Isis Salvaterra

fabric regular

When Isis Salvaterra's brother died, she had no other family in London, and had to deal with taking his body back to Brazil herself. The experience was devastating, but one thing kept her going: the thought of getting back to fabric's Room 1. "My friends and family helped me, of course," she says. "But what I really needed was to be there. As soon as I was back in London I went, straight to the DJ booth, and felt the electrical energy and the sound going into me. When Craig [Richards] played his last record, he leaned over and said, 'Are you going to be OK?' I said, 'Yes, I will, because of this.'"

Salvaterra moved to London with her family at 14, and started going out to places like The Fridge and Lost. In 2002, she first went to fabric on a Saturday, and she's not missed many weekends since. "I was growing up in my tastes then," she says, "and it was the right place. I love the fact that even though it has grown up too, and little things keep changing, really it's the same. Any night you can walk down the staircase and the experience is the same. I feel like I'm coming home when I walk into Room 1."

She studied politics and psychology, worked for the British government, and always considered music as a side project. But the longer she went to fabric, the further she was sucked in. The staff and DJs became friends to the point where she shared a flat with Judy Griffith for a couple of years, and the stewards and glass collectors would ask after her and treat her as part of the family. "As well as giving me this comfort," she says, "it was such a musical education. Now, I promise you if you tell me which DJs are playing next week, I could tell you the exact order they'll play in!"

Eventually Salvaterra succumbed to the inevitable and quit her job to do music full-time, starting the party, booking agency and record label Toi-Toi. She now works with fabric regularly, and despite her fear that working in music would stop it being "so sacred" for her, she remains as passionate as ever. "I've seen so many clubs where to have professionalism it has to be corporate—but at fabric, that's not true. They still understand that you can be family, care about people, and still do your job well. That is real underground values, I guess."

Chapter

06

Soundsystem profile

Martin Audio, Pioneer

Like everyone at fabric, Keith Reynolds has his work cut out in the preparation for the club's reopening. In particular, he's busy hiring—ideally trying to get his core team of lighting and sound freelancers back together. That's quite a responsibility. If you're talking about fabric, it's not long before the subject of soundsystems comes up. The club is renowned for its impeccable sound. Room 1, in particular, is held up as beacon of exceptional audio quality. With sub-bass drivers under the floor, the systems are perfectly tuned to deliver not just the most brutal Andy C double-drops, but also the finest of psychedelic detail in an epic Ricardo Villalobos set.

"One of the sound guys is desperate to come back, because he's hating it out there," smiles Reynolds. "He's been with us for seven years, so he's just hating all the other jobs that he's getting in comparison."

It's doubly important that everyone is ready. There's a new soundsystem in place in Room 2, a Pioneer Pro Audio rig with 26 speakers encircling the dance floor. "Wherever you stand in the room, it sounds exactly the same," Reynolds says. "Which is quite a hard achievement." He gives a look of exasperation as he recounts ripping out the old system and replacing it, with a team of three, in just five days—"where most big clubs would take months for an install"—so that fabric could open as normal on the Friday (only for the club's license to be revoked just over a week later).

Reynolds has been in the music scene since the '80s, cut his clubbing teeth at Edinburgh's notorious Pure nights led by Twitch (later of Optimo) and Brainstorm, and nights at the Sub Club in Glasgow. After getting hooked on sound tech and learning his craft, he ended up doing sound for bands, but also at clubs like Metalheadz where he worked for years. "If you can do a Metalheadz night and get it right, then you've passed! One of our other guys here had done their sessions, so he was perfect for the job, he just walked straight in."

Reynolds started freelancing for fabric in 2002, and worked his way up, eventually becoming the technical manager last year. During the week, he consults with DJs on their setup, software is updated, hardware is brought in, "so they know they can walk in and start instantly if they have to." At night, there are up to seven technical staff, with a sound and a light technician for each room, plus more if there are live acts. "It's worth the extra money to be certain that if something goes wrong, nobody has to try and fix it while doing another job," he says. "It's an extra demand on the club's budget, but I've never had any complaint from the guys about it." The Room 2 reinstall notwithstanding, he, like so many people at fabric, sees his job as a matter of keeping things rolling and maintaining the highest possible standards.

Chapter

07

Mix

The sound of fabric

Terry Francis steps up

Since fabric opened on October 21st, 1999, Terry Francis has, along with Craig Richards, played almost every Saturday night at the club. Over the years, the bookings have spanned an incredibly vast range of music, but the deep, sophisticated, groove-led style these two DJs embody has sat at the very centre of this sonic constellation. His In Residence mix, recorded this past weekend at the #Saveourculture event at Great Suffolk St Warehouse in London, shows that more 20 years into his DJing career, Francis is still at the very top of his game.

Still haven't got your fabric fix? You can visit its club profile here, and there's more information on the series via the dedicated In Residence page.