FRIDAY 22 | At the pinnacle of the late-1980s UK club scene, when places like the Blitz and people like Steve Strange ruled a Gomorrah of 24-hour gender-bending pop excess, the truly rebellious were breaking into abandoned school buildings in Brixton, wiring the places up with admirably jerry-rigged sound systems and shaking the windows with music that didn’t suck. Paul Adair was a 20-something college radio DJ from small-town New Zealand. He had come of age on New Order, The Smiths, Cabaret Voltaire and early UK electronica. London was the fount of all music. Vinyl was the substrate. “The ’80s,” says Adair, who spins under the name Dr Wahwah, “is completely underrated. A whole lot of people associate it with bad haircuts and the music videos that all came out, but look: it was a time when a lot of musical genres that dominate now came to the fore.” Untethered in the Big Smoke, Adair quickly fell in behind the turntables at London squat parties. Twelve-inch wax became his currency. His collection grew from a few dozen discs in the beginning to more than a thousand by the time he returned home in 1993. Adair’s collection has been mostly closeted since, more a souvenir from his colourful youth than any actively curated library. But he got the jones again recently and started buying records, hence Vinyl Mania, a party at Meta House for Dr Wahwah and wax lovers to spend the night together. The culmination of a two-year buying spree, Wahwah’s newest additions are “predominantly dance” he says, but there’s lots of eclectic obscurata there too: Japanese funk, limited-edition underground disco, minimalist African house. He’s joined tonight by Nico Mesterharm, aka DJ Nicomatic, who brought his vinyl collection from Germany to Phnom Penh two years ago. Combined with Dr Wahwah’s set, the library pushes 3,000 titles.
WHO: Dr Wahwah and DJ Nicomatic
WHAT: Vinyl Mania
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 9pm November 22
WHY: Sounds from the European underground have never been so accessible