Photos from Below 5th Birthday @ Cellar Door.
Best party + venue combination in Birmingham, possibly the multiverse. Pics speak for themselves.
Archive for the ‘Birmingham’ Category
Below 5th Birthday @ Cellar Door | Photos
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010Mad Hat Raves and Skanking Dubstep
Saturday, November 29th, 2008
This Friday I’ve been out to two really fantastic events. First stop was the Mad Hat Rave hosted in part by Birmingham uni’s 1210 Dj society. They always get a real good crowd down, and everyone made an extra effort with the hats! The fact I graduated just over a year ago is starting to show, as I’m starting to recognise less and less people at these student events, a new crowd is moving in, and it won’t be long till I’m the odd “oldie” graduate who won’t let go of their lost youth! I’m not quite there yet though, and it was great to catch up with a few people I did know, and listen to them spin up on the decks. Hats of interest included an acid man, a tesco bag, and a hat made from flyers to for the event.
Round the corner EarDrum and Breakthru were hosting a spectaular combination of Drum and Bass and brilliant Dubstep. A great friendly crowd skanked and shimmed their bodies through earth shattering bass. The sound set up in the medicine bar is awesome, and the Djs were certainly making use of the weapon grade bass.
Full galleries: Mad Hat Rave and EarDrum
DMC championships
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Hooray, that’s Dj Switch winning the Birmingham heats for the DMC Technics World Championships. Hosted by Heducation at the lovely Medicine Bar. Switch’s dad was supporting him all night, taking video footage and stills, and after the prize giving, lugging around heavy bottles of CK One and uge record bags. Props to him, its really nice to see someone have that sort of backing. Big cheers for “Poppa Switch”.
It was more of a stand around and watch event, than a club night -although there was some serious dirty drum and bass going down in the kitchen, and Dj Rafik spun up a cool set after the competition in the Med Bar.
Had to make do with built in flash all night, due to my flashgun being a bit worse for wear – takes me back, and makes me realise just how fantastic the built in flash on my now ancient Nikon is. Remember kids, its not what you’ve got, its what you do with it.
Many a free DVD, T Shirts, Wallets and stickers were given away 
Shame there weren’t more people there.
more photos in the gallery section: DMC Championships
Eclectricity Bank Holiday Bonanza
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
A few pics from the bank holiday weekend – theres a full write up over at BrumLive from Adam Moffatt with some of these pics.
Managed to drop and break my Nikon SB-600 Speedlight
It was pretty busy all night, which was great. The warehouse wasn’t opened up, which is probably just as well – could have been a bit sparse. You could only get pints of cider from the bar or bottles which was a bit disappointing, but the Bacardi cocktail bar made up for the lack of beer in pints with some great tasting (and rather strong) Mojitos.
You can find all the photos from the night in the gallery section of this website.
Ultra+ : James Zambiela / Luke Dzierzek : Custard Factory
Sunday, May 25th, 2008
Like what it says on the tin really – another fantastic night put on by the guys at Ultra+. James Zambiela is a bit of a wizard on the decks, and Ultra+ had the bright idea of hooking up a camera and projecting it on a nice big screen so everyone could see what was going on. One of the most excited crowds I’ve seen at the Factory for a while. There seemed to be an unusually high number of complete nutters (good nutters, not punch your face in nutters), making up an awful lot of high energy in the main room. Something in the water perhaps? I think the photos speak for themselves really. Someone made off with Shiela the Ultra+ mascot, a life size blow up doll of dubious origin who looks down upon the party goes from the rafters. Anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts is urged to keep it to themselves.
Dj Yoda – Spectrum @ Custard Factory
Monday, May 19th, 2008
10th May 2008 || Spectrum presents DJ YODA`s Magic Cinema Show which combines visuals and music!
Super hot weather combined with a tragic warm up Dj playing a hellish assortment of R&B and Speed Garage (WTF???) resulted in the night starting off with practically everybody outside of the medbar sitting around the pool. Infact there was hardly any surface not covered by groups of people chatting, wearing shorts, and generally not dancing or getting involved in the night. It was more like an afternoon in the park playing Frisbee than a night of aural goodness.
Luckily the night cooled down a bit, and the offending Dj was booted off the decks accompanied by a small cheer. Tentatively, people started to migrate into the medbar, where some decent music had been started up.
Dj Yoda was met with a somewhat hesitant audience – some people had bought some Magic Cinema Show popcorn from a stand and were munching on it expectantly, others looked on at the popcorn munchers wondering wherever they should be eating popcorn too, or wherever they should be sitting down and worrying about the tall person in front. Some looked as if they were still trying to get over the Speed Garage, and many had clearly been in the sun too long.
I guess people just didn’t know what to expect from a live visual and audio show. I remember seeing Yoda at the med bar a few years back, and it was rammed full of static people staring at the screens for an hour or so, you couldn’t really move, and you wouldn’t want to dance in case someone turned round and said “excuse me could you not do that, I’m trying to watch the show!”.
This time around was completely different, aside from being able to move (It was still incredibly warm inside, and only the brave ventured up onto the stage), the show had plenty of opportunities to have a good ‘ole boogie without worrying too much about what was happening on any of the three huge projection screens. Dj Yoda has got this performance down pretty tight, and the latest show is whole new experience with fresh new material. Certainly not bad when you consider hes just one guy up there doing everything, when comparable acts such as ColdCut have a whole multitude of peeps and at least a thousand laptops, gixmos and gadgets interconnected by ten miles of cables.
I didn’t stay around for Atomic Hooligan, but I have it on very good assurance that he was bloody ace, and theres a pic of Pete Jordan poking him in the ear to prove it. See Below::
Tom
03/05/08 Eclectricity presents Cocoon, Sven Vath @ Q Club, Birmingham
Thursday, May 15th, 200803/05/08 Sven Vath @ QClub
Eclectricity are proud to welcome Cocoon, Sven Vath`s Frankfurt techno brand to the Que Club in Birmingham with an unmissable all-star line up.
The Q Club was particularly busy for this bank holiday event, and drawing a good crowd is essential if the vibe in this massive venue is going to be any good. Thankfully the amphitheater was heaving, even the surrounding balconies seemed to be filling up with more than usual array of peeps looking for a bit of space to chill and sit down. Sven Vath put on an truly slick set, marred only by a brief loss of sound which was soon rectified by the quickest moving sounds techs I’ve ever seen.
Spectrum were hosting the chapel with the likes of Pete Jordan, Switch and Stanton Warriors kicking big lively breakbeat sounds. I for one preferred the closer friendly feel of the chapel area, I felt more connected with the music. Don’t get me wrong, the amphitheater is a truly impressive space, and the crowd did it justice by filling it up with the massive amount of energy it requires to feel good. It’s just that I sometimes find that amount of space a bit disjointed unless it is totally rammed and I can’t move.
