Atomic Energy @EQ Warehouse Rave, London - by Phil Raa Posted by Phil Raa on Aug 3, 2003 - 9:00:00 AM

This was absolutely fucking amazing -- it had better been cos i was leaving van dyk in bristol for it =)

Upon word from Miss Diddy, took up the offer of a Nu NRG/Psy Trance warehouse type rave, 10:30 start. 7am finish.

Started out very shakily, we've never been to hackney wick before, and we found the EQ warehouse in a fenced-round mini industrial estate, we were amazed to find that the cash point in a nearby petrol station hadn't actually been ripped out of the wall.

Run by atomic energy promotions and the 'Nu Energy collective' (neither of which i'd ever heard of), this wasn't gonna be some frantic/tidy bouncing event. This is Nu NRG/Psy Trance/Techno. Pure smooth 170bpm thumping electronica bass drums, none of the [insert trademark camden palace/sundis/SE1 sound]. I heard about 3 songs during the entire night i could identify, although not remembering much of most of it. The tunes ran smoothly, fast, rhythmically, subliminally and very very sweetly. Names playing were Kevin Energy, Sharkey who are techno style DJ's, Group 185, and names like Astralex in thew Psy room.
100% nu nrg and 200% nu nrg cd's, and astral projection are the sort of sounds.

One major trademark of psy trance is a slowly changing phasor in the background, the entire tunes sound phases slowly up and down, imagine listening to a tune with a 'sine wave' built into it. Very, Very trippy. I believe acid is popular here -- certainly looking at some of the clubbers

After managing to communicate with the geezah in the reception shed that we could park the car in there, a fiver was parted with and we found a space where other cars were. safer, like. Was very pleased to find the entrance we went in had doormen, and a woman who instructed us to leave bottles at the door. what's a search? At 11:45 we walked through a spaced out tunnel covered in shiny aluminium with some white strobes flashing along the roof. Pure, sharp thumping bass drums got louder.

Into the main room, 1.5x the height of a normal room. and think dark lights (uv) tripped out designs painted on the wall, a room about twice the size of a squash court. Several speakers plonked around the room, lots of empty wall-floor space, for chilling in. next door (psy) was another room which was split half into a bar chill area, and half into the dancefloor, with the audio coming from a wall of speakers! Bit of warehouse/club arena work done here!

We had 20 minutes of waving our arms around and absorbing the tunes, then i was randomly approached by a self employed bloke. Nice This fella ended up saying hi to me occasionally during the evening and we generally agreed we were having fun. There were a couple of other small 12x12 rooms, where people were 'avin it for themselves.

I bumped into Miss Diddy and agreed we both thought this was a bit good. Also met Crill, very good to say hello. The exact events until 4am or so were just 'f*ck me this is hitting it'. After filling in time I wandered to the psy room, and went to heaven. I could fucking live, eat, breathe the psy stuff. I't lllllush, steady, fast, electronic, rhythmic, and there are things that go soooooo well with this trippy sound. Kind of like one of those things you'll always remember as being a unique point in time.


At 7am we all left, helped by the sun shining through some of the windows in the psy room - something that gave the end of the night a very "we're coming back" feeling, another thing which just put the finishing touches on a night where you definitely felt you'd been somewhere and come back.

They're doing it again soon i think it would be awsome to get a mini mass CTW outing i dont have any pics but i pinched the promo poster and will scan it into the flyers gallery section

Phil_raa