FRIDAY 28 | 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. 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… it was a time when a lot of musical genres that dominate now came to the fore”. Untethered in the Big Smoke, Adair fell in behind the turntables at London squat parties. Twelve-inch wax became his currency. Adair recently started buying records again, hence Vinyl Mania, a party for Dr Wahwah and fellow wax lovers to spend the night together. 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 by Nico Mesterharm, aka DJ Nicomatic.
WHO: Dr Wahwah and DJ Nicomatic
WHAT: Vinyl Mania
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 9pm February 28
WHY: Sounds from the European underground have never been so accessible
Blitz closed in 1980 and Steve Strange was in Ibiza in the late 80s. The late 80s club scene was dominated by rare groove clubs