Whirl-y-Waves, Volume 3: Sounds Imported (2005)
24 tracks, 155 minutes (2 CDs)
Stream and download via the Whirl-y-Gig website
The Whirl-y-Gig is a wonderful world of alternative dance music. A parallel dimension of love, light and epic bangers. Well, it is once a month. The Whirl-y-Gig is actually London’s longest running club night, and has been transforming spaces all over the city into pools of peace since 1981. Once upon a time, Whirl-y-Gig was a common fixture at festivals, including WOMAD, and now they have their own – the Whirl-y-Fayre, hosted in August every year in the Vale of Avalon. The décor is a beautiful mix of psychedelic fabrics, colours, flowers, trippy lights, lasers, UV, East African and South Asian patterns and abstract shapes. The smell is a mix of incense and euphoria (and a little weed). Everyone is welcome, and its wide-ranging audience reflects that. Elderly hippies dance with first-time clubbers and everyone feels the love. Until licensing laws got the better of it, it was even an all-ages affair, and the kids were made as welcome as anyone else. An hour before the end (at 6 or 7am), a huge parachute drops from the ceiling, the music turns chill-out and everyone comes down gently into the morning on a gently undulating flow of bliss. What a place.
And behind the decks, every time, for (at least) eight hours a go, is the legendary DJ Monkey Pilot. His sets are as eclectic as the people that attend: there’s techno, trance, drum’n’bass, dubstep, house… but for me, one of the most important roles of the Whirl-y-Gig was as a vibrant centre of the world dubtronica scene at its height in the 90s and early 2000s. So many of that scene came through the Whirl-y-Gig doors, whether as artists or as partygoers (usually both), and the club duly responded by becoming the place to hear the newest and the best in internationally-focused, dubwise electronica. The list is jaw-dropping. Transglobal Underground, Loop Guru, Dreadzone, the State of Bengal, Kamel Nitrate, the Kumba Mela Experiment, Banco de Gaia, MoMo, Zion Train, System 7…I could go on and on. Two of the albums we’ve already covered on this blog even have tracks named after the club – Dr Didg’s Serotonality and Afro Celt Sound System’s Volume 1: Sound Magic – such is its influence.
Which brings us to this album. It’s the last of three compilations in the Whirl-y-Waves series, and it’s basically just a little bit of Whirl-y-Gig that you can make in your very own home. It’s two CD-length mixes by Monkey Pilot himself built up of all solid Whirl-y-classics. The first CD is full-on dancing hard at midnight music; the second takes a more chill-out approach, still with beats, but appropriate for those early morning still-awake peace-outs. Parachute music, in other words. Each of the three Whirl-y-Waves mixes are essential in my opinion, but I went for this third volume purely because of those first four tracks: ‘King of the Sound and Blues’ by Zion Train, ‘Yellow and Black Taxi Cab’ by Transglobal Underground, ‘Tandoori Shakeaway’ by Kamel Nitrate and ‘Ararim (Friends, Family and Lovers Remix)’ by Oojami. To start an album that way is simply obscene – that’s over 20 minutes of just some of the best world dubtronica imaginable. And after that, the vibe just continues.
The Whirl-y-Gig is some proper utopian shit, and if the world were more like it is inside those walls, it would be a happier, and certainly dancier, place. But life can’t be a Whirl-y-Gig all the time, so for the rest of it, this album can help. Light that incense, flick those lights and sail across those Whirl-y-Waves into a better place…
Excellent review!
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