- "Here I run uptown as fast as I can..." Replace the uptown run with the downtown 436 bus, and Arthur Russell's iniquitous "lion's den" with Deptford Broadway's finest (but distinctly unerotic) Lion Fried Chicken, and you'd be forgiven for quickly downgrading any wild expectations you might have from a party called (however brilliantly) Kiss Me Again. Add a stormy night outside and big parties elsewhere—Russell's Dinosaur co-producer and Gallery legend Nicky Siano playing at Corsica Studios, not to mention Cassy up at Fabric—and you couldn't be blamed for lowering those expectations even further. The final nail in the coffin could easily be the un-signposted, grimy facade of the venue itself—The Bunker in New Cross—which is far less fascinating than the shop next door: The Semiconductor Archives, selling Military and Industrial Obsolete Semiconductors. Apparently the Archives have even got planning permission for expansion.
Most of the decor in the Bunker looks a bit obsolete too, with last week's Halloween efforts (a sign to the Haunted House—a new genre?—and various spiders crawling over the walls) joining what I assumed were permanent fixtures (UV striplights, a much-lived-in bar and several notices of the venue's drug policy) to create the equivalent of a psytrance party in the downstairs room of your local student pub. Full marks to the night's organiser, Peder Matthias, though, for the NWAQ sticker in the toilets, but no marks to the two girls who really did look like they were at a student psytrance party.
Peder's record reviews on various blogs are of the type you can actually read—so it's a bonus that they're also usually about great records. That good taste (and sense) happily translated to a good selection on the night: we arrived to Soundstream's "Soul Train" and were soon treated to "Mined" from Ribn and Terrence Parker's now-ubiquitous "Your Love." The sound, though harsh as sandpaper after a while, was still reasonable for the space, and by the time Alton Miller started mmm-ing and yeah-ing through Chez Damier's "Sometimes I Feel Like," I'd been properly warmed up for the main event. Lakuti, headlining for once, had already been dancing on the floor, and she carried on dancing behind the decks for the following three hours.
Add together her all-star booking agency, two labels (one of them, Uzuri, being almost faultless) and consistently enjoyable parties (this year's Sud birthday almost managed to scale the heights of last year) and it's easy to get overwhelmed. Lakuti has become the gravitational centre of a global system of producers and DJs who all share a love of house music, "plain and simple." So obviously she has a good record collection: Nu Groove, Trax, Kerri Chandler, Lil' Louis, Armando...everyone was at the party, and I loved it.
There was a full range of diva attitudes that seemed to address the question in "Kiss Me Again." Sharvette drawled her sardonic warning against men, "don't be fooled"; the predatory Denise Motto ordered us to "tell Jack I'm coming back for more"; and then Kym Mazelle started up her licentious entreaties to "taste my love." For any men reeling from all this pushing and pulling, Dreamer G's "I Got That Feelin" at least gave one viewpoint from their side, albeit quite a paranoid one. Then there were the tracks that didn't have any hang-ups, like Global Communication's cut-up masterpiece "The Way": "I love the way you make me feel!"
Then, in between all these classics, came moments which I've come to think of as more particular to Lakuti herself, where the basslines and vocals gave way to nastier jack tracks and the mood became druggier. When you leave song for mere sound, and structure for shifting rhythms and textures, you take a bit of a risk; even more so with a rather indie-looking crowd that had so far shown most appreciation for the piano solos on "The House Music Anthem." Lakuti pulled it off around half an hour from the end of the party, though, tightening the mixing and playing some trackier records, which merged into something quite astonishing. The recent Leron Carson double pack on Sound Signature got a triple-airing, giving the whole mood a strange new kind of twist. It made me wish Lakuti would put herself on last at a Süd Electronic party—7 to 9 AM, heads down, out of mind, "I know my visions are real."
Playing for an hour longer than expected, Lakuti was still going at 3 AM, even pleading with the bouncer to allow one last record: Theo Parrish's complete deconstruction (or inversion, or subversion) of LCD Soundsystem's "45:33." For a party in such a basic venue in an odd part of town, Kiss Me Again nevertheless managed to provide an evening of sensual (and, for one of those psytrance girls and the guy pursuing her, rather physical) pleasures. With fabric getting more expensive and Craig Richards still putting himself on last, it seems that smaller parties like this are the right way forward over the coming winter. The foolproof combination of £2.50 beers/doubles with the booking of Red Rack'em for December's party will be more than enough to get me back on that 436.