Most of the scene’s stars are here for documentary which follows its emergence from ‘wild west’ parties to chart success and moral panic
This exhaustive insider survey of UK garage music – whose demise has been greatly exaggerated – leaves you feeling like some wrung-out Ayia Napa afterparty casualty. It isn’t too great at clearly delineating the scene’s origins (in short: up-tempo versions of Paradise Garage-style house, hence the name, dovetailing with British jungle), and gives too much airtime to seminal club night Garage Nation, possibly because its former promoter Terry Stone co-directed this film. But, calling on an A-Z of exponents – from Pied Piper and MC Neat to approximately 13% of So Solid Crew – it supplies a wry rewind to late 90s extravagance and hand-wringing consternation about the genre’s future.
The film meanders through UK garage’s early days, a “wild west” with promoters such as Stone running free in the era’s more laissez-faire clubland to road test MCs and dubplates of potential new bangers. The garage sound was more lacquered and luxuriating than jungle, bringing in more female clubbers, and the style 100% aspirational. The documentary works best in the more structured segments cringing at the fashion of the era (think palm tree-print Moschino T-shirts and pinstripe trousers) and the excess. By the early 00s, when UK garage was decamping en masse for summer rec in shellshocked Cyprus, it was getting out of hand. Perennial afterparty venue Insomnia apparently had a secret room with a four-poster bed and, for some reason, a monkey; So Solid’s Lisa Maffia confides that the smell of sambuca hits her sick trigger to this day.
Continue reading...by Phil Hoad via Electronic music | The Guardian
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