Chibuku's Birthday Party - Sat 15th of March

Intense. It's about the only way to describe the history Liverpool's most celebrated club. A figure just shy of a decade which has seenriots in a small room above a pub, raves in forests, in forts... even on trains.They’ve roadblocked Nation repeatedly in Liverpool, done the same for Fabric in London, thrownout a sell-out CD and crafted sterling service to Creamfields year after year. There’s also the small factor of the creative geniuses behind the soiree lining themselves up elsewhere to improve clubland; Rich McGiniss’ crucial role in the stunningly successful Warehouse Project and Will Jameson’s talismanic efforts with the Lake of Stars Festival in Malawi two shining examples. Quite a huge leap for a club that started off as four students pooling forty quid, telling a few mates, and then simply hoping for the best.


And what a history it’s held. Still breaking the rules, Chibuku Shake Shake emphatically stuck two fingers at the superclub scene which had gripped clubland, taking it back to what acid house intended. In the beginning it was just deep house; riotous looting of Chicago’s Jack and added the French je ne sais quoi that was running amok throughout clubland at the time. Soon things were getting wilder, hotfooting to bigger venues and tearing up genre conventions by showcasing every genre of music under the sun, veering from jazzy drum n bass licks to searing techno workouts, rowdy breaks to groove focused house and joining all the dots in between. To list all the guests would use enough paper to alert Greenpeace, so it’s better to suggest that the best booking of them all, the late great John Peel, was achingly symbolic of the depth and variety of the music on offer. The spirit of the greatest DJ of them all is still a huge aspect of the club, his appearance testifying the brilliance of the institution named after an African alcoholic porridge.

 
And now for the event. Well, safe to say, it’s nothing short of staggeringly good...

 
There’s the main room, which in simplistic terms could be described as nothing short of a purist’s wet dream. This is where the Cosmic Twins Francois K and Derrick May will be squaring up against each other for a seismic battle of galactic musical depth. For the uninitiated, Francois Kevorkian was making dance music a full decade before acid house, tweaking his re-edit skills and DJ nous when disco ruled the dancefloors, aeons before white suits and Studio 54 excess blunted the appeal. Still relevant thirty years after he first started, the word legend doesn’t come close. And May, well, he was the innovator, the guy who took Techno to the next level in the late eighties as the world was seduced by the robot funk from Detroit. Likewise with Kevorkian, he’s still a huge aspect of dance music and still creating timeless music. Witnessing these two together is like the electronica equivalent of visiting the Great Wall of China, one of life’s must-see experiences and emanating sound transmissions heard deep into space...

 

There’s also a live appearance from the Underground Resistance Collective. If May was pushing the blueprint forward at the start of techno, it was UR who breathed further life as the next generation took over. Their militant ideology secured infamy, but it was their breath-taking music which sealed the deal. Vividly emotional, this was techno at its most evocative, it’s most intense and it’s most powerful. And live, well, dance music doesn’t hit the soul any harder through any other medium. On the night Mad Mike, DJ Skurge, Ray7, Arlantis and Franki Fuktz will all be present. Chibuku’s homegrown superstar Dom Chung, now presiding over the Ministry of Sound global club tours and a frequent player at Derrick May’s Hi-Tek soul gatherings at the Elephant & Castle superclub, rounds off a mouthwatering extravaganza.

 

Next up is the courtyard. The scene of some of Liverpool’s most iconic clubbing moments in the past fifteen years bears witness to a swaggering gathering of hip-hop, drum n bass and erstwhile funk technicians. Headlining is silver tongued maestro Roots Manuva alongside DJ MK. No Hip-Hop musician has greater summarised British culture than Rodney Smith, his blurry English patois and unique eccentricity aligning him more with heroes like Ray Davies and Syd Barret than any of rap’s luminaries. Andy C’s full throttle deebee tearouts add a fizzing zest to proceedings, his cacophonous dexterity tailor made to rinse the Annexe to within an inch of it’s life. Likewise for Mampi Swift, the Dmn B don that remains one of the key figures in the scene across the globe. But not before ?uestlove, the musical lynchpin of Philly Rap titans The Roots, swings by with his turbo excursions through the annals of black music. West coast Hip-Hop mainstays Peanut Butter Wolf & James Pants also rock up, their forages through the wilder aspects of the genre adding psychedelic licks to the usual bombast of Hip-hop’s sonic adventures for a very special AV set. There’s also dubstep upstart Benga bringing the cosmic wobble, Japanese light fingered assasin Aki and local luminaries the No-Fakin DJs kick-starting the funk.

 

And then for the final tour de force. Chibuku is built on blasting three quivering aural mandates, and whilst musical enormity and eye-popping ensembles remain a flagship maneuver for the Liverpool club, they’ve never lost their hardcore. The Annexe boasts three of dance music’s modern greats, combining to create a riotous vibe in its bristling intimacy. Erol Alkan returns, at his own personal bequest, to the room where he first tore into the non London’s clubbing population’s consensus at the turn of the century. Also playing is rave vixen Annie Mac, her riot laden sounds of underground boogie the perfect soundtrack to the modern clubbers pogo frenzies. The final segment sees Another act equally amoured with the Annexe, with the Plump DJs making a welcome return to Chibuku, who first showed their potential in bringing breaks out of the backrooms and onto the bigger floors with their tearouts within this hallowed space. Chibuku’s own party starters the Beatmonkeys step up to the platter to rock the joint from the off


Quite simply, the party of the century...