Cubed With Duke Dumont & Shadowchild

I last went to a Cubed night around a year ago, Eats Everything was playing and he smashed it. However I wasn’t keen on Disclosure and the other resident DJs played music far too heavy for my brain to cope with.

However I have noticed with interest over recent months the bookings in terms of headliners and also resident DJs has veered more towards my liking – or maybe my tastes are broadening a touch – probably both.

The booking of Duke Dumont was enough for me – as I love some of his latest releases such as the immense Thunder Clap.

Sadly I was not organized enough to make it in time for the wonderful Ryan of From Disco To Disco fame to open proceedings, and I missed the next DJ (who I am told was not my personal cup of musical tea). Must remember to bring my passport to save extra taxi journeys in future. Being 33 doesn’t save me from ID checks. I should know that by now.

I had never heard of Shadow Child, one for the younger folk I assumed, however I enjoyed his mixture of house, garage, post-dubstep and various other underground genres – I spent plenty of time dancing (when not queuing, more on that later), a particular highlight was an excellent remix of Renegade Master.

Duke Dumont then came on around 2am, if I recall correctly, played some excellent tracks including some of his own, a track by Makam that Nina Kraviz has been hammering, and some electro stuff I wasn’t so keen on but overall was a really enjoyable set. I should have wrote this on Sunday/Morning when I still vaguely had a memory of some of the tracks played!

The curse of the foot-shufflers is well-known to those who go out in London, as I and others have been forced to in recent years, and I am increasingly becoming disdained with the arrogant rudeness of a certain section of the London clubland, along with the thieves, criminals and general scumbags infiltrating nights with even the most minimal of minimal DJs (well maybe Villalobos excepting as that is thankfully too minimal for the idiots…so far).

The Cubed crowd are a mixed bunch, but a musically well-educated crowd, they responded to the big underground tracks like one would hope – it is a noticeably young crowd with plenty of students (hence the queues at the bar!), but a friendly crowd, I spoke to far more randoms than I do in London, helped by a good bunch of friends and recognizable faces and lots of people were dancing all night – hell, I am pretty sure I even saw a decent attempt at a DC10 sit-down by a fair proportion though I may have been imagining things by then!

I did have to queue to get in, queue for the cloakroom, queue for the toilet and queue for the bar – but house music is very popular right now, nobody wants an empty club and I have had to queue to get into fabric for 2-3 hours before – this was nothing. Those I heard moaning about a little queue here and there need to get out in the world.

A little tip for people – go to toilet before you get to the club as the beginning of a popular night everyone wants to use the toilet then.

That said, Sub 89 do need to up their game in terms of bar staffing levels – there was not enough people serving and never have been when I have been there. The bar queues do not need to be so long. The venue do get a lot of important things right especially the excellent sound-system (Oakford Social Club if you are reading sort out the dreadful quality of some of those abused speakers please!), and are way ahead of many venues in Reading. All staff including security were friendly and non-intrusive – helped of course by a total lack of trouble by the excellent crowd.

A refreshing night out – refreshing to go out on a Friday, a refreshing lack of tubes, trains, buses, etc, refreshing lack of smartphone thieves.  So will I go again?

Hell yes.  I have already purchased my ticket for 22nd March and hope to see you there.

The guys behind Cubed are setting the pace in terms of clubbing in Reading, they will be celebrating a desevered 2nd birthday and there is no way I am missing out.