Blue Box in the House
New venue for the legendary Back to Basics night.
Fourteen years after Ali Cooke and Dave Beer threw the original Basics party at the Music Factory in Leeds the club has another new home, after a largely happy existence at Rehab. The new home is My House, formerly the Stinky Peephouse, a gay club operated by Carol Quilliam and family, and in which Beer has had a 25% stake since 2004. The departure from Rehab was a troubled one, with internal differences fuelling the split after three years fine tuning a new concept for a "new, postchemical" generation of clubbers.
Whilst the Basics team worked hard on the look of Rehab, Beer points out that it felt like "a cross between a really cool club and the fucking Sanderson hotel". A little much for the Basics faithful, perhaps, but the eventual departure was a disappointment for Beer, whose night had just begun to take significant profits again after three years of graft. My House is so named to reflect the venue's intimate and informal atmosphere. Beer believes that the ‘housy' feel of the venue is closer in spirit to the original Basics parties. Originally converted from a warehouse, the venue consists of a main dance room, the Bedroom (for DJ-spun old school funky disco), and a middle-floor Lounge for chilled drinking. Outside a terrace and balcony provides some al fresco dancing space, with an optional marquee available for partying late into the summer nights. "We've made the venue quirky and deliberately tried to create the venue as if it were somebody's house," says Beer. "We wanted to do it quickly in January and restart the party on 11th February. From the plumbing to the window fitting to the paintwork, everybody did a little bit, and it was humbling to see all the positive support from so many parties. It was a labour of love, on behalf of many people."
Beer brings to My House his rosta of A-list residents – the likes of Ralph Lawson, James Holroyd and Paul Woolford. Were this not proof enough of Basics' cache, the likes of Laurent Garnier, Carl Craig and Tiesto are also booked. And whilst the unique status of Basics amongst UK club nights is part of its draw, so too is the new Funktion One rig, courtesy of installers Blue Box Audio, and about which the residents have been raving.
The Blue Box team, including Mark Metcalf, Dave Cole and Graham Ansell, were under pressure to complete the installation before the opening in February, having only a two week window to install. Because Funktion One's lead time is two weeks, Metcalf et al provided a temporary set of cabinets from their rental stock. The refurbishment had been completed before Blue Box arrived, so the installers responded creatively to the challenge by working the cabinets sympathetically into the designs of the main room. Ansell took up sections of wall and floor – in order to terminate the cable – and replaced them discretely, whilst the cabinets were ground stacked in the corners, bar and adjacent to the DJ booth. Four Funktion one F218s provide an astonishing bass thump, while Res 2s and F88s provide the mid and high ranges. The kit is powered through MC2 E45 and E25 amplifiers, with a BSS DPR 404 controlling the final set up. Two Martin F12s are used as monitors in the booth. "Blue Box were amazing, and so professional, I can't speak too highly of them," says Beer. "They created an amazing sound in a venue which is admittedly not conventional, but appropriately enough took our sound system back to basics."
