The Gallery – Turnmills

Date:   Friday 20th January 2006
Address:   The Gallery, Turnmills, 63b Clerkenwell Road , London . EC1M 5NP
Occurrence:  Weekly
Hours:   10.30pm / 7.30am
Ticket Price:   £10 / £12 / £15
Genre:   House, Trance, Techno
Dress Code:   N/A
Capacity:   750

Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Gavyn Mytchel, Dan Ascherl, Gary Ramsden

The Gallery has been voted the best club in London for the second year running by Mixmag, and for anyone who hasn’t been, I strongly recommend that you go soon! It’s quite an accolade to live up to, and for this, our first Gallery outing of the year, we weren’t disappointed.

Having recently experienced other major London clubs queuing systems, it is refreshing to find an efficient and friendly door policy in place with none of the fuss
and hassle often found elsewhere.

It’s amazing how quickly a club can fill up; at 11.30 pm it was quiet, but by the time Paul Oakenfold took centre stage in the main room at midnight, it was anything but quiet! I even heard the occasional Oaky! Oaky! chant. Following on from a nice progressive warm up, huge cheers were going up and he hadn’t even pressed play yet!

Carrying on briefly in a progressive style, the momentum picked up with each passing tune.
It was almost like a straight line graph through the origin that you used to get a school, if you know what I mean? If not, then that means it was good programming by Oaky!

By the time, the fourth tune was dropped, we were now miles away from the gentle progressive opening and into “proper” trance, as some might call it. Now, having hunted high and low for this mysterious but utterly majestic fourth tune, I can now reveal it as Mike Foyle’s Love Dusk Theme; what a beautiful breakdown. The set was superb, very much in the tech-trance mould, with big rolling bass lines and riffs. As said many times, Oakenfold is a master at playing the right tune at the right time, and this happened a lot tonight. Oaky would break up the tough instrumentals and throw in an absolute classic to everyone’s delight. It seems the obvious thing to do, but the number of times you see someone plod along tune after tune after tune….zzzzzzz. A couple of times you sensed the atmosphere was not as rapturous as it was, then bang; it gets even better! Solar Stone’s Seven Cities (what a tune!), Southern Sun (oh my god! What a tune!), Tiesto’s Traffic (still an absolute belter) and the new mix of Greece 2000 were all dropped at exactly the right time. I was certain that he would finish with Emjay’s Real High, which is gonna be massive, but it is a serious banger and instead he wound down slightly, finishing with Fred Baker’s, more melodic, Confirmation to make way for Seb Fontaine.

After Oaky’s energetic set, there was a bit of a drop in intensity, as Seb changed direction completely. There was a bit of a cooling of period, and a lot of tunes sounded pretty similar to me; somebody said it was called big room house that he was playing? Gradually the energy was cranked up again, and the last half hour or so was brilliant. We got some classics like Hey Boy, Hey Girl and Dark and Long, but no tune was greeted quite like The Eurythmics Sweet Dreams.
It’s just that bass line, it does it every time. Got to say, we thought Seb’s mixing was amazing, sometimes weren’t sure if it was a mash-up he was playing or mixing two tunes together!

Next up was Gallery resident Gavyn Mitchell, and having never seen him, I was looking forward to hearing his tunes. After such a long day and been up for nearly 24 hours, at 4 in the morning, I think I can be forgiven for being a bit on the tired side, but Gavyn and Dan Ascherl, who followed on from him, certainly woke me up! I loved it, and was back in the wide awake club! Gavyn played proper trance too, quite tough and techy; loved Filterfunk’s SOS (Sander Van Doorn mix of course!), that samples The Police’s Message in a Bottle, and great to hear Dumonde’s Tomorrow. Some more euphoric stuff then followed such as the customary rendition of Synasthasea (is that how you spell it?).

Last but definitely not least was Dan Ascherl. Never heard of him in my life, and he had a packed main room who were well up for it to entertain. He did this and then some! I can’t tell you what tunes he played coz the names I knew not, but they were very very good; guess what genre? Yup, proper trance again! Not heard tunes like those for a long time, banging and energetic with more than a hint of goa or psy trance about them. Right up my street! I’m a fan!

After spending many hours trying to decide which set I liked best, I couldn’t pick one, and that’s quite a compliment to Mr Ascherl, as Oaky could walk on water in our eyes! Needless to say, the crowd were brilliant as usual, and that main room sound system is crystal clear; you can still talk without busting someone’s ear drum!

We had such a good night that my mate managed to lose his hooded top that was tied around his waste without noticing! Can’t wait for Picotto!

P.S. Anyone seen a green hoody with Northern Soul on the front? No? Never mind.

Venue: 9
Music: 9
Crowd: 10
Sound System: 9
Total: 37 / 40

Rating: Gold Award

Review written by: Kevin Boyle  kevin@uk-cl.co.uk