Fabriclive 47 & 48

Fabric was my dream-club. As a small-town sixth-former, I imagined moving through its claustrophobic tunnels, identity dissolving into the egoless swarm-patterns of the technofied crowd. I’d already been to Filthy Dukes’ club-night, Kill ‘Em All, at the ghastly Camden Barfly, where their slick mixes of neo-post-punk, overloaded blog-house and electro seemed to promise a

glamorous future.

Years later, I would come across Toddla T’s productions – thrillingly cheap ‘n’ easy, cross-breeding the fairground rhythms of Yorkshire funk and the synthetic jollities of ragga. DJing came, as it often does, before albums whose parameters are well-shaped by the interests splayed out here for the public eye and/or ear.

The mix-CDs in the Fabriclive series are designed, in part, as reproductions of typical club DJ sets, and both recent entrants keep the sweat-and-sugar-rush of the club experience foremost throughout: the dynamic and textural variations of finer recent mix CDs, such as Optimo’s ‘How To Kill The DJ, Pt. 2’ or Michael Mayer’s ‘Immer’ series, are almost wholly demolished into a sustained high; a plateau of continual excitement – except that continual pop-pleasure itself becomes boring after long enough.

Filthy Dukes succeed rather better on this front, grafting vintage synth and Italo disco to the more reflective end of the electro

spectrum, maintaining a constant, bubbling pulse across seventy-five minutes that take in surprising swerves, dips and interludes. They collage bottom-of-the-crate obscurities

with more recent dancefloor detonations: witness Sparks’ ever-welcome heart-hammer-fest ‘Beat The Clock’ (produced by Giorgio Moroder) segueing into Alan Braxe &

Fred Falke’s arpeggiated waterfall ‘Most Wanted’, only to roll seamlessly into a delightfully synthetic-sensual remix of Sebastien Tellier, whispering vocodered nothings in your ear.

By contrast, Toddla T’s sixty-nine minutes bear closest comparison with Diplo’s mixes, blending every shade of bass-pop without regard to subtlety or decency – coarse, hectic, and as guiltily gratifying as pop gets. The flow of funky, dancehall, hip-hop – courtesy of a star turn from Roots Manuva, whose last album Toddla produced, on Stone’s ‘Amen’ – is only punctuated by occasional dips into grime and the more boisterous end of dubstep, aesthetically uniting the mix: digital bass wobble, gloopy synth hits, blaring mid-range frequencies, the thrill of patois syllables pushed up against the electronic grain.

But too much of a good thing still palls: he may have the magic pop touch, but it will take more than this to make me dream again about clubs.