Crucial Stories Of Sheffield's Clubbing History

[SheffieldForum]

The Tribune today goes on a slightly different tack of looking back at the huge club scene in the city back in the day and the people behind it — featuring an extract from the Out Of Space book dedicated to race culture in the UK, a really interesting read. Here’s a bit:

 

”The city is known for its association with Gatecrasher, a club that ended up burning to the ground, but the space had been envisioned and opened as the Republic by Anwar back in the mid-nineties. A few years earlier, he’d played a huge role in another club called the Palais, originally to be found on London Road. This nightlife hotspot went on to be known as Bed and we saw Groove Armada and 2ManyDJs play there. But rather than still operating as a beacon of clubbing, it’s now a Budgens supermarket, and a prime example of the transient nature of the way the spaces we have these formative, influential experiences inside get reused. Anwar himself has moved on from Sheffield and into a new life too as a creative and media expert and influencer. I was lucky enough to be able to speak to him about his experiences and hear firsthand how he reimagined what nightlife in South Yorkshire could be…”

 

Read the full thing, with lots of memories, at The Tribune.

 

 

[Delbow]

Anyone with an interest in clubbing, dance music and Sheffield really ought to read Join the Future by Sheffielder Matt Anniss. This meticulously researched book primarily covers the late 80s and the birth of the bass-heavy, uniquely UK (and initially uniquely Yorkshire) genre of 'bleep and bass'. Although it covers acts from other Yorkshire cities such as Leeds (Nightmares on Wax, LFO) and Bradford (Unique 3), there is a heavy focus on Sheffield, especially Winston Hazel and DJ Parrot (both referenced in the Tribune article) and legendary producer / engineer Rob Gordon.

 

I was particularly fascinated by the sections about Rob Gordon, in-house engineer at FON and then Warp. Partly because of his literally DIY into music production (he started out making electronic projects from a magazine using components bought at Maplin, and claims one of the reasons he could use all the equipment in a studio was because he could be bothered to read the instruction manual), partly because of the distinctiveness and incredibly high quality of his production - a combination of precision and weight - and partly because he seems to have done very poorly out of it all, financially speaking. Annis avoids getting too much into claims and counter-claims between Gordon and his associates, so the truth is opaque, but for someone with the reputation he had at the time, and still has among many, it seems wrong that he ended up with little to show for it. Apart from some of the classic productions of the era, that is. He is an unsung Sheffield legend.

 

It's also fascinating to discover what a huge role Sheffield had in shaping early British techno music, laying the basis for world-spanning genres like drum & bass.