If David Lynch had made a film about what the year 2000 was going to be like, I reckon it would have looked a lot like the Futureboogie takeover at Factory Studios. There was a serious commitment to the billowing smoke machine, perhaps to encourage inhibition-free dancing, of which there was plenty.
By day, the venue is a recording studio, but on Saturday night the series of rooms became a labarynthine pop-up club. It wasn’t so much finding the right room that was the problem, rather locating the building itself. A 19th century mill building on an industrial estate in Lawrence Hill, it was in one of the less-trodden musical corners of Bristol, creating a melting pot of partygoers. Futureboogie regulars came together with some locals who may have been expecting something else when they followed their ears to the source of the pounding bass emanating from the studio’s walls. Inside I overheard one girl tell a friend that she should have worn her trackies and trainers. She wasn’t wrong; who wants to wear restrictive footwear when the music calls for an exhibition of your finest moves?
Futureboogie’s Joe 90 got the crowd in the mood with his brand of Detroit House-come-Disco grooves. Then came DJ Nature’s set, which provided us with a host of classic Disco treats, whilst still keeping it current. His set was a reminder that disco gave birth to the dancefloor as we know it today. Felix Dickinson’s set that followed brought a Housey punch to the more classic groove laid down by Nature. When we got tired from all the shape-throwing, we could venture outside to one of the most prepared smoking areas I’ve seen in a long time, with bunting, plenty of umbrellas, and a decent layer of mulch on the ground. Perhaps this was the ‘Garden Get Together’ element of the night, but whatever the reason, I say bravo.
It was a night of dancing and exploration, both physically and temporally, back through the roots of Disco; a wild night with an original Wild Bunch member pulling the strings. If we needed a reason to buy tickets for Garden Festival, this was it.
