Rabid Festival at SEOne

Rabid Festival at SEOne

09 November, 2009
by: Nuria

As much as I've been looking forward to the quality acts on the bill, Rabid – held at SEOne on a chilly Saturday night – turns out to be a mixed affair. The setting for a carefree night feels threatened from the get-go as my friend and I are greeted at the club entrance by gruff-looking security and heavy-duty metal detectors. I have been to enough electronic nights to know this is not the norm, especially as we're a mere five minutes from London Bridge – hardly troublesome turf.

A guard then proceeds to scan in our respective IDs so that our photos appear on a monitor in the same fashion as wanted criminals on a police poster. Bizarre, I think with a shrug, determined not to let a slightly discomfiting welcome have any bearing on my enjoyment of the night.

Once inside SEOne, we attempt to navigate the cavernous club. It's dark and disorienting, but we find an approachable staff member who points out the direction of the different rooms and locations of toilets. The music – some of it bleepy tech-house, some of it harder, more up-tempo techno – is in line with what I expected. I want to find out who's on at what time, but there are no schedules taped up on the walls. Considering the main appeal of Rabid is the sheer diversity of its line-up, this is a significant oversight. Luckily, another staff member kindly shares his crumpled handwritten list with us.

It informs us that we've caught part of Paris-based Paul Ritch's eclectic set, but missed the more electro-y Berlin outfit D.I.M. The list also confirms that even though there's nearly five hours to go of the marathon so-called 'winter techno festival' (it runs from eight to eight), two rooms out of five have frustratingly closed already. Still, the DJs we see are giving it their all. Leipzig's Matthias Tanzmann impresses with a funk-tinged set that riles up the main room.

Unfortunately, the momentum elsewhere is slowing to the point that DJs are performing to near-empty rooms. A large contingent of revellers has already reached the stage where dancing has turned to perfunctory swaying, and faces once energised now wear subdued expressions. This lack of zest proves contagious, so my friend and I decide to stay planted in the main room where the atmosphere is actually busy.

At half-past-five, Slovenian stalwart Umek dishes up the set that everyone's been waiting for, but it's too late for the night to truly take off. I'm trying to focus on the music (solid deep techno), yet the mood is dragging. If this was Fabric, Umek would be going down a storm and the place would be buzzing. But at SEOne, at an event with no reputation preceding it, the vibe is less intimate and more disjointed. It proves fatal and by six, we leave.

Perhaps £35 is too steep a price for what is essentially an overblown club night rather than a festival. Reducing the number of filler acts would make tickets more affordable, create more cohesion, and diminish the amount of pissed-up idiots with too much cash on hand. Perhaps, too, a smaller venue with more compact rooms and a crispier, less reverb-prone sound system would heighten the experience.

All in all, Rabid is a lacklustre night that leaves me hoping for two things: one, that the DJs billed are not deterred from coming to London again (especially those who already play few UK dates), and two, that visiting clubbers do not assume metal detectors to be a fixture of London clubbing – because seriously, they're not nor should they be!


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Nuria