Flashback is the one of the biggest old skool events in the whole country and is held at the Que Club in Birmingham, my favourite dance venue anywhere. I arrived at the Que Club at about 8.45 to find only a handful of people in the queue. I spent the time waiting for the club to open, chatting with the two lads I got there with. The doors opened just after the scheduled time of 9.30 and I headed inside. I had a fairly thorough search by the security and headed into the venue. The security at the Que Club are efficient and are generally friendly except for one of them. He’s some kind of door supervisor and at the start he was walking down the queue asking a few girls for ID and then sneering “goodnight”, when they couldn’t produce any. I appreciate that security have a job to do, but there’s no need to be a wanker about it. I dropped my coat into the cloakroom and went into the main arena. This is undoubtedly the best thing about the Que Club and really does have to be seen to be believed. Flashback incorporates quite a few different styles of rave music, but is principally an old skool night and so the main arena is always old skool. This arena is large and does take a while to fill up properly, so as it was still early I headed downstairs to the hard house and techno arena. Playing there first was an up and coming hard house DJ called XLR8. He played a decent hard house set with quite a lot of stuff that I hadn’t heard before. At 11.00 I headed across the corridor to the drum n bass arena, to see 2 up and coming DJs in there. These 2 played a good set with mainly less well known tunes, but they dropped in a few big tunes as well. At midnight I head back into the hard house and techno arena to see Scorpio and Producer back to back. Gabba and hard teckno is not automatically a style that I would have associated with Flashback and I was interested to see if these two would water down their set slightly or stick to their guns and play full on teckno style. They started off with a couple of slower tunes, then dropped in the freeform monster ‘Ultraworld 5’ and from then on it was just pure in your face gabba. This is gabba as is in the original 250 bpm + gabba, and not the slower nu style stuff. It was obvious some people had come specifically for this set, and the rest of the ravers who liked gabba as well. They played for 2 hours and the whole set was just mental, surely being one of the most insane set that I’ve seen in ages. It definitely got my vote as set of the night, and I came out of the arena afterwards to find that I’d missed the headline old skool set of the night which was Shy FX + UK Apachi live. I then headed into the old skool arena afterwards, which was absolutely rammed by now and the lazers were in full effect. Stu Allen was on and was playing loads of classics such as ‘Take me away’ and ‘DJs Unite’ which sent everyone mad on the dancefloor. After him came the old Shellys favourite, Daz Willot. He played a mainly older set with lots of old skool house classics and a few jungle tunes as well. I then went back to the hard house room to see Mistress Mo, the Flashback promoter do a good hard house set, after she done her old skool set earlier on in the night, The final set in the main arena was Sy back to back with Seduction, which I didn’t want to miss. I walked into the arena to hear Sy playing the old Prodigy classic ‘Everybody in the place’, then they played a few old skool house tunes. From then on, it was all well known old hardcore tunes, and Sy added some of his trademark scratching. The crowd seemed to be loving this set the most and got an excellent reception from the crowd. At 5.00 I went back downstairs to see the one and only Mark EG playing back to back with Ben Eye. They played a set which was similar to Mark EG’s usual hard trance style, but with a harder techno edge to it. I danced right through till the end and left at 6.00 with a smile on my face and a warm glow inside. Flashback is undoubtedly the biggest rave event in the Midlands and they always deliver the good when it comes to production. The main was amazing as it always is, with 2 green lazers lighting up the whole room, massive inflatables hanging from the ceiling and banners everywhere. The 2 smaller arena downstairs were both well decorated too as well as good sound + lighting. The lineup is well varied with the biggest old skool DJs alongside drum n bass, techno, hard house and trance DJs. If you haven’t been yet then you really should go because Flashback is a massive event and has a really dedicated following in the Midlands. Their next event is on September 8th with Altern-8 live, Vibes + Livelee, Slipmatt, Andy C, Randall, Clarkee and Mark EG. Hopefully see you there :) Shouts go to MC Xtra C, Wilson, Lollypop2.
