FRIDAY 25 |At the pinnacle of the late-1980s UK club scene, when people like Steve Strange ruled a Gomorrah of gender-bending pop excess, the truly rebellious were breaking into abandoned school buildings in Brixton, wiring the places with 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 Wah Wah, “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.
WHO: Dr Wahwah and DJ Nicomatic
WHAT: Vinyl Only Night
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Boulevard
WHEN: 9pm April 25
WHY: Sounds from the European underground have never been so accessible