Now We Are Six: Urban Gorilla at The Plug in Sheffield, 30/11/07

Sheffield’s Urban Gorilla reached the merry old age of six on Friday and chose to celebrate in a style worthy of its reputation, offering lucky clubbers not one, but two world class DJs: James Zabiela and Green Velvet. Hurrah!

When UG returned to its spiritual home of the Plug in Sheffield, following a nine month stay at UNIQ, urban gorillas everywhere rejoiced. One can see why, as the Plug is the perfect little venue. Small enough to keep its intimacy, big enough to have a few areas to explore (how did your reviewer not spot the arcade games until the end?!), and wonderfully loud enough to be not be able to hear for most of Saturday. I unashamedly love this venue.

And my oh my, the music! James Zabiela, the night’s first co-headliner, has reached the dizzy heights of the Best British DJ accolade, and was ranked seventeenth in the world by DJ Mag in 2007, despite only being 28. Having now seen him I can see why! Taking to the decks at 1am Zabiela mixed house and breakbeat in a technically jaw-dropping manner, building and meandering his set whilst keeping the dance floor absolutely rammed. Zabiela is one of those special DJs how can play house music with such skill as to make silly dance floor smiling mandatory and unavoidable. The main problem on Friday was finding anywhere to dance!

The night’s second headliner was a different breed of DJ. Coming out of the Chicago house scene in the early 1990s, Green Velvet (or Curtis Alan Jones to his parents) is one of those rare figures in dance music to go someway to cultivating an image beyond his music. A streak of neon green hair marked him out as an “electro punk” long before mainstream culture got its grubby little hands on the term. Musically also, Green Velvet differs greatly from Zabiela, and an ominous thud at 3am made clear it was going to be all about the techno from now on in. Somehow managing the trick of playing massive tracks one after another without sounding like a Ministry of Sound compilation, Green Velvet treated the UG crowd to such delights as Tomas Andersson’s “Washing Up” and Vitalic’s “Phoney Part 1”. Obvious highlights were excellent performances of his own classics “Flash” and “La La Land”.

Alas, 5am came too soon and Green Velvet’s attempts to fit another track in were thwarted by the usual nemesis of one more demands, the door staff. From a newly converted urban gorilla; Happy Birthday UG!!

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.