Down Under Review

As a Soul fan, I moved to London in 2004 new to the underground scene of electronic music but soon found a space in my heart ready to receive and accept this new genre of music. I found that being introduced to the harmonious dance tracks produced by Valantino Kanzyani was a nice way to ease into the more techno rhythms one hears on a night out. 8 years on however, and fully immersed in the electronic music scene, I was drawn to The Hub Studios next to Hackney Wick station for the ‘Down Under’ party with the prestigious Valentine Kanzyani as guest, alongside PRASLEA from a:rpr:ia . Merry after a few Christmas cocktails we reached our ‘secret warehouse location’ and after being warned by an acquaintance that we won’t need the cloakroom, continued to put out jackets in anyway and headed to the bar to continue our Christmas festivities. Cold doesn’t even begin to describe it; freezing would be a more accurate description! However our notion that the more we drank, the warmer we would become, seemed effective and we persisted with this method of retaining warmth throughout the night.

The Hub Studios seems to be the new ‘it’ venue where various parties such as Day Moon and Muak have been held. It is an intimate space that was ideal for this occasion, the only thing I can fault is the temperature (pre-drinks) and perhaps the location, as it could be much further to travel than your usual warehouse venue.

Made up of regulars to small knit parties the crowd where a pleasure to be with and gave the event more of a party vibe than the intensity of a warehouse rave. Kanzyani played a fairly non-substantial set that unfortunately didn’t really live up to the expectation. However, he was shortly followed by a back to back set from PRASLEA and Kanzyani that saw us through the rest of the night and this more than made up for it. There was distant inclusion of the melodious track ‘Flying’ from Kanzyani’s label ‘Jesus Loved You’, coupled with the familiar minimal undertones from PRASLEA which was delightful and gave a feeling of sentiment to the occasion, like hearing the voice of an old friend.

On the whole Down Under delivered a fun party to kick off the Christmas festivities and it more than fulfilled us on a night out. I am looking forward to the next one.