Detonate is Nottingham’s biggest and most popular Drum and Bass night, run at Stealth and Rescue Room’s every two week’s. It pulls in a lot of the big names in Drum and Bass such as Andy C, High Contrast and Pendulum and as such has developed a massive following within the student and non-student communities alike. It was recently voted the best Drum and Bass night outside of London and seems to be on a meteoric rise to being one of the best Drum and Bass nights in the country!
Now I’m going to be flying the face of popular opinion by saying this, but Detonate is shit. I’m not saying its always been shit, but it is now, I’ve been going to most of the nights for the last few years and I’ve seen it getting steadily worse and worse, paradoxically as it’s got worse people have seemed to love it more and more. Something is definitely awry here! Let me explain my reasoning to you and ill let you make your own decision. When I first started going the D’n’B scene was still very much an underground thing, when Andy C and all the other big acts were still making a name for themselves, apart from Hype, Dillinja and Bryan Gee obviously. It was fairly cheap to get in and you could enjoy a night out to some good music without having to fight your way through club to get anywhere. The DJ’s who played put real effort into there set’s to get the crowd going, deploying all of the little tricks to make the night special. It genuinely was a spot on night, just enough of a crowd to give a good atmosphere but not to many to make it into a sweatbox.
The big change came with the release of Pendulum’s remixes of the Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” and “Voodoo People”, these I hate to say it but “Pop Rock” Drum and Bass tunes broke the scene to a much larger market and with that came a massive influx of attention from students into the rock and Indy scene who wanted to look cool and different by listening to Drum and Bass. The Prodigy had been accused of killing the first Rave Scene in the 90’s with the release of “Charlie” and now they had passed the baton to Pendulum. Now I’m not slagging the Prodigy off there one of my favourite bands, but it is both ironic and hopefully coincidental that it’s there
music that has broke the scene to a larger popular audience and therefore effectively ruined it. “New Rave” and “Indy Rave” are unfortunately here to stay like a malignant tumour eating away at the heart of the scene that cannot be operated on.
It was when this influx of Students and Middle Aged sexual Predators after the Students, came that Detonate stopped being about the music and atmosphere and became a cash cow for the people who run it. When you first get into a type of music you obviously are going to listen to the big names as mentioned before like Andy C, Pendulum, High Contrast, Hype and the ilk because of this the line-ups started to become repetitive re- hashes of the same few big names with a few up and coming’s acts (who often perform better than the main acts) thrown in as a warm up. The problem is that people really don’t take the time to check out any other names in D’n’B, they just stick with what they know, the reason for this escapes me completely.
It’s a question of supply and demand I guess, the people want to see these acts so they get booked regularly but with that comes some inherent problems. Firstly DJ’s don’t change there sets every few weeks, so its more that likely that if you see an act more than once in a couple of months you are pretty much guaranteed to hear the same set. Secondly if a DJ knows he’s going to be playing to a packed club where people are literally just there so they can see that DJ, not for the music but so they can say they’ve seen that DJ they wont put any effort into the set! Many times I’ve seen DJ Hype at detonate and he hasn’t scratched once or Andy C not bothering with any beat juggling! These are there trademarks, the cornerstones of their act and they don’t even need to bother! I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Dubplate or VIP tune played in my entire time going to Stealth! You may as well be listening to a student DJ playing all the popular tunes and fork out a tenner for the pleasure. The music has definitely taken a backseat nowadays, the DJ’s playing are almost commodities, they go in play a lame set and the crowd lap it up because its DJ so and so, they walk away with a wad of cash and the crowd walk away proclaiming how good they were to all there friend’s! Fucking Madness!
Detonate has come to signify everything that is wrong with the rave scene at the moment. The last night I went to was Detonates 8th Birthday with Andy C, the ticket cost me 15 pounds (a ludicrous amount) for one of the worst nights out I’ve ever had out! The problem with the amount of people who now go to Detonate is that Stealth is simply not equipped to handle the amount of people that go, The club has a capacity of around a thousand with Rescue Rooms included in that number. Stealth itself has a capacity of 700 people, this would be fine if people were evenly distributed throughout the two clubs but all to often all one thousand people are rammed into just Stealth with Rescue Rooms pretty much ignored. This was certainly the case on the 8th Birthday I could barely get through the door of the main room because the place was so full! The aroma of sweaty bodies lingered in the air like a thick fog people were queuing 10 people deep at the bar to buy a can of Red Stripe for 3 quid, robbing bastards.
When you’ve got a main room that’s vastly over capacity and filled with people who are on a combination of booze and drugs there’s bound to be a lot of aggravation and a lot of people who cant handle what they’ve taken so they fall about the place like idiot’s, wherever I turned all I could see was people looking angry, fucked or both. This isn’t really the sort of atmosphere you want at a Rave! Everybody goes into there own little ’Fuck Off’ mode. After literally fighting and shouldering my way through the crowd to the dance floor, where the crowd become so dense that you could not tell where one person started. I suppose this was the optimum situation for the sexual predators in the crowd! The ability to sexually harass without looking like a pervert! Every here and there you could see a 30 or 40 something with a big grin on there face, you’ve got to wonder do these people go home and put D’n’B on to relax when they get home from a hard day at the office? I somehow doubt it! their there for one reason and one reason alone to try and pull some pissed / fucked student chick. DARKNESS!
Once I had actually managed to get onto the dance floor I wanted to get off as quick as I possibly could, it was literally impossible to dance! People were gyrating into each other and jumping up and down due to the lack of room, the heat and the sweat were almost unbearable! Andy C was on the decks, playing the usual selection of tunes I’d heard hundreds if not thousands of times before, he looked worn and haggard. A very different man from the young bloke I had been watching in the same spot a few years ago absolutely tearing the place to bits, with me screaming my head of and waving my arms in praise. You could tell that he’d already played at least two or three clubs elsewhere in the country that night, peddling the exact same banal, bland set probably to a riotous response every time. I couldn’t bare to stay in it for more than five minutes before having to begin the epic journey to get my way out of the crowd which took another ten minutes at least. My question to you is why on earth would you pay 10 - 15 quid regularly to go to a club where the artists play sub-standard sets, you cant dance let alone move and you have to pay an extortionate price for a can of warm beer that gets knocked out of your hand by the surging masses the second you turn away from the bar? To me it seems utterly ludicrous, but it apparently it’s absolutely brilliant according to the rest of the D’n’B scene! Either I’m a jaded old man at 21 or the people who say that Detonate is amazing have never actually been to a good rave and therefore don’t know any better!
Having said all these negative point’s I must admit there is some hope for Detonate to regain it’s former glory. This comes by virtue of the fact that they have decided to replace the Hip-Hop at their nights with Dubstep / Grime. This is where Detonate is actually doing a good job of bringing something to the rave scene in Notts, outside London and Bristol there are barely any big nights that put Dubstep on and get the key Players involved such as Digital Mystikz, Loefah, Skream, Geoim, The Slaughter Mob and Nott‘s own Kode9. Not only is it bringing a new type of music to the masses, Dupstep provides a much better option to chill out to rather than hip hop because you can have a dance to it but because the tempo is much slower and the crowd much smaller you don’t burn yourself out after five minutes of dancing, whereas Hip Hop is more standing around and nodding your head, which can get boring. Detonates sister night “Detonate Presents . . .” at the social is also to be commended as it is bringing a lot of quality up and coming acts to Nott’s without having them overshadowed by the big names, this give people a chance to actually here something a bit different. To my mind this is where all the real action is going on for people who are actually into Drum and Bass for the music, harking much more back to the old Detonate where music and atmosphere were key. To be honest though if you’re looking for quality music there’s only one place to be, Blueprint.
Now I’m going to be flying the face of popular opinion by saying this, but Detonate is shit. I’m not saying its always been shit, but it is now, I’ve been going to most of the nights for the last few years and I’ve seen it getting steadily worse and worse, paradoxically as it’s got worse people have seemed to love it more and more. Something is definitely awry here! Let me explain my reasoning to you and ill let you make your own decision. When I first started going the D’n’B scene was still very much an underground thing, when Andy C and all the other big acts were still making a name for themselves, apart from Hype, Dillinja and Bryan Gee obviously. It was fairly cheap to get in and you could enjoy a night out to some good music without having to fight your way through club to get anywhere. The DJ’s who played put real effort into there set’s to get the crowd going, deploying all of the little tricks to make the night special. It genuinely was a spot on night, just enough of a crowd to give a good atmosphere but not to many to make it into a sweatbox.
The big change came with the release of Pendulum’s remixes of the Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” and “Voodoo People”, these I hate to say it but “Pop Rock” Drum and Bass tunes broke the scene to a much larger market and with that came a massive influx of attention from students into the rock and Indy scene who wanted to look cool and different by listening to Drum and Bass. The Prodigy had been accused of killing the first Rave Scene in the 90’s with the release of “Charlie” and now they had passed the baton to Pendulum. Now I’m not slagging the Prodigy off there one of my favourite bands, but it is both ironic and hopefully coincidental that it’s there
music that has broke the scene to a larger popular audience and therefore effectively ruined it. “New Rave” and “Indy Rave” are unfortunately here to stay like a malignant tumour eating away at the heart of the scene that cannot be operated on.
It was when this influx of Students and Middle Aged sexual Predators after the Students, came that Detonate stopped being about the music and atmosphere and became a cash cow for the people who run it. When you first get into a type of music you obviously are going to listen to the big names as mentioned before like Andy C, Pendulum, High Contrast, Hype and the ilk because of this the line-ups started to become repetitive re- hashes of the same few big names with a few up and coming’s acts (who often perform better than the main acts) thrown in as a warm up. The problem is that people really don’t take the time to check out any other names in D’n’B, they just stick with what they know, the reason for this escapes me completely.
It’s a question of supply and demand I guess, the people want to see these acts so they get booked regularly but with that comes some inherent problems. Firstly DJ’s don’t change there sets every few weeks, so its more that likely that if you see an act more than once in a couple of months you are pretty much guaranteed to hear the same set. Secondly if a DJ knows he’s going to be playing to a packed club where people are literally just there so they can see that DJ, not for the music but so they can say they’ve seen that DJ they wont put any effort into the set! Many times I’ve seen DJ Hype at detonate and he hasn’t scratched once or Andy C not bothering with any beat juggling! These are there trademarks, the cornerstones of their act and they don’t even need to bother! I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Dubplate or VIP tune played in my entire time going to Stealth! You may as well be listening to a student DJ playing all the popular tunes and fork out a tenner for the pleasure. The music has definitely taken a backseat nowadays, the DJ’s playing are almost commodities, they go in play a lame set and the crowd lap it up because its DJ so and so, they walk away with a wad of cash and the crowd walk away proclaiming how good they were to all there friend’s! Fucking Madness!
Detonate has come to signify everything that is wrong with the rave scene at the moment. The last night I went to was Detonates 8th Birthday with Andy C, the ticket cost me 15 pounds (a ludicrous amount) for one of the worst nights out I’ve ever had out! The problem with the amount of people who now go to Detonate is that Stealth is simply not equipped to handle the amount of people that go, The club has a capacity of around a thousand with Rescue Rooms included in that number. Stealth itself has a capacity of 700 people, this would be fine if people were evenly distributed throughout the two clubs but all to often all one thousand people are rammed into just Stealth with Rescue Rooms pretty much ignored. This was certainly the case on the 8th Birthday I could barely get through the door of the main room because the place was so full! The aroma of sweaty bodies lingered in the air like a thick fog people were queuing 10 people deep at the bar to buy a can of Red Stripe for 3 quid, robbing bastards.
When you’ve got a main room that’s vastly over capacity and filled with people who are on a combination of booze and drugs there’s bound to be a lot of aggravation and a lot of people who cant handle what they’ve taken so they fall about the place like idiot’s, wherever I turned all I could see was people looking angry, fucked or both. This isn’t really the sort of atmosphere you want at a Rave! Everybody goes into there own little ’Fuck Off’ mode. After literally fighting and shouldering my way through the crowd to the dance floor, where the crowd become so dense that you could not tell where one person started. I suppose this was the optimum situation for the sexual predators in the crowd! The ability to sexually harass without looking like a pervert! Every here and there you could see a 30 or 40 something with a big grin on there face, you’ve got to wonder do these people go home and put D’n’B on to relax when they get home from a hard day at the office? I somehow doubt it! their there for one reason and one reason alone to try and pull some pissed / fucked student chick. DARKNESS!
Once I had actually managed to get onto the dance floor I wanted to get off as quick as I possibly could, it was literally impossible to dance! People were gyrating into each other and jumping up and down due to the lack of room, the heat and the sweat were almost unbearable! Andy C was on the decks, playing the usual selection of tunes I’d heard hundreds if not thousands of times before, he looked worn and haggard. A very different man from the young bloke I had been watching in the same spot a few years ago absolutely tearing the place to bits, with me screaming my head of and waving my arms in praise. You could tell that he’d already played at least two or three clubs elsewhere in the country that night, peddling the exact same banal, bland set probably to a riotous response every time. I couldn’t bare to stay in it for more than five minutes before having to begin the epic journey to get my way out of the crowd which took another ten minutes at least. My question to you is why on earth would you pay 10 - 15 quid regularly to go to a club where the artists play sub-standard sets, you cant dance let alone move and you have to pay an extortionate price for a can of warm beer that gets knocked out of your hand by the surging masses the second you turn away from the bar? To me it seems utterly ludicrous, but it apparently it’s absolutely brilliant according to the rest of the D’n’B scene! Either I’m a jaded old man at 21 or the people who say that Detonate is amazing have never actually been to a good rave and therefore don’t know any better!
Having said all these negative point’s I must admit there is some hope for Detonate to regain it’s former glory. This comes by virtue of the fact that they have decided to replace the Hip-Hop at their nights with Dubstep / Grime. This is where Detonate is actually doing a good job of bringing something to the rave scene in Notts, outside London and Bristol there are barely any big nights that put Dubstep on and get the key Players involved such as Digital Mystikz, Loefah, Skream, Geoim, The Slaughter Mob and Nott‘s own Kode9. Not only is it bringing a new type of music to the masses, Dupstep provides a much better option to chill out to rather than hip hop because you can have a dance to it but because the tempo is much slower and the crowd much smaller you don’t burn yourself out after five minutes of dancing, whereas Hip Hop is more standing around and nodding your head, which can get boring. Detonates sister night “Detonate Presents . . .” at the social is also to be commended as it is bringing a lot of quality up and coming acts to Nott’s without having them overshadowed by the big names, this give people a chance to actually here something a bit different. To my mind this is where all the real action is going on for people who are actually into Drum and Bass for the music, harking much more back to the old Detonate where music and atmosphere were key. To be honest though if you’re looking for quality music there’s only one place to be, Blueprint.
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