Techno Nonsense: Boiler Room

For those of you paying any attention to the underground dance music scene here in London, there has been one true star to emerge over the past year, and that is the Boiler Room; yet describing it isn’t easy. It’s not a club night because to get in you need an invite and it’s usually all over by 11pm. Rather, the whole event is more like a radio show, broadcasting over Ustream to thousands of people sat at their laptops (like I have done numerous times, wishing my life wasn’t so dull). Every week, the biggest names in the underground scene make it down to Corsica Studios in Elephant and Castle to play out to the lucky two hundred who got guest list, and to a few thousand internet fans across the world.

This week marked the first birthday of the Boiler Room, and to celebrate, they opened their doors to the public. But this is Techno Nonsense, and I’m supposed to be writing about labels, so I’ll get back on track. The reason I mentioned the Boiler Room is that it is a spotlight for what is happening in the UK’s Bass music scene, and what I wanted this article to be about. But I couldn’t choose a single label to focus on. Hessle Audio, 502 Recordings and Numbers have all put out records of such consistently high quality over the past year that you realise your massive hatred for Will.I.Am is irrelevant. The three aforementioned labels have released music from the likes of James Blake, Jamie XX, and many other quality producers who aren’t also current buzzwords at the NME.

Yet there are two sides to the story. Ben UFO (co-founder of Hessle Audio), Oneman (founder of 502 Recordings) and Jackmaster (Numbers co-owner) are all DJs. “So what?”, you say, “everyone’s a DJ these days”. True, but very few people actually make any moves in the dance music scene for being DJs alone. Most are producers first, achieve popularity and the public assumes they are a DJ, so they all rush to see a Deadmau5 DJ set and have no idea that all they saw was a guy playing his own music from his laptop.

Ben UFO, Oneman and Jackmaster on the other hand know what they’re good at and stick to it. In any one set from the label-heads you are likely to hear 1970’s disco, 80’s house music, hip-hop, 90’s garage and tracks that won’t be released ’til 2012.

That’s what makes the scene so exciting, you have really talented producers putting their own spin on genres such as grime, garage and dubstep, and brilliant DJs exhibiting the best in not just current music, but music that stretches back decades. Can you tell I’m pretty excited about going to the Boiler Room on Thursday?