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| Koolwaters |
Date:
Friday 5th March 2004
Address: The Wharf, Bridge St, Taunton
Occurrence: Monthly
Hours: 10pm
- 3am
Ticket Price: £10
Genre: Hard house / Trance
/ Funky house
Dress Code:
Anything goes
Capacity:
1000 |
Pictures:
Click
Here
Listings: Click
Here |
| Line-Up:
Lisa Lashes, Danny Slade, Marc Vedo, Lee Thomas,
Marcus & Matt Thorne, Neil Roberts |
Koolwaters stinks! I
am, of course, talking about the aftershave! Koolwaters,
the club night, is actually rather good and doesn’t
smell in the slightest. Ok, so the ladies toilets
were a bit pongy after one reveller brought up her
Friday night fish and chips all over a cubicle floor.
But I’m sure this was a direct response to
her excitement of the whole experience, rather than
there being anything extraordinary in the Water!
Or maybe not?
Koolwaters began life at The Wharf (then ‘Deller’s)
nearly 4 years ago and now, after a break of 6 months,
promised to come back with a bang. Or rather a tsunami.
The recent drought has not been the result of a
dying club brand. Rather, reservoirs were being
built behind the scenes in order to offer clubbers
something of a torrential downpour! For Koolwaters
resident and founder Marc Vedo, there has certainly
been no calm before the storm. 2003 has seen him
busy promoting Something Fruity, a new funky house
venture based in Bristol, and working on taking
the Koolwaters brand further afield. In the summer,
he played to 50,000 people in Istanbul and then
saw the New Year in with a club party on a beach
in Mombasa. KW’s other residents, Marcus and
Matt Thorne, engaged themselves in setting up sibling
house nights Ta1 and Housework in Taunton. On top
of this, they’ve been preparing for a hectic
summer touring in Dubai, Egypt, Holland, Turkey
and Ibiza. The March Koolwaters relaunch at The
Wharf was time to let the flood gates open.
The come-back had been widely and painstakingly
promoted so it would have been very surprising if
it had been a washout. In the weeks leading up to
the event, local dance music magazines, radio, websites
and record shops were filled to bursting point on
the forthcoming deluge. And on the night, it was
great to see that all this effort didn’t go
down the pan. Arriving at about 11pm, things were
already in full flow (including the sweat on the
backs of several clubbers, who looked like they’d
been dancing since the doors opened). Throughout
the course of the night, the heat and atmosphere
in the main room rapidly intensified; with the pole
dancer’s pole on the main dance floor (as
always) proving a great source of amusement! My
male companion was also more than impressed with
the amount of ‘half naked birds’ on
show! It’s not what you’d expect from
‘clubbing’ in a modest cider drinker’s
town in the heart of the West Country. But then
Koolwaters seems to be full of surprises.
One such surprise, perhaps, was the relative quietness
of room 2. After the reported success of Matt &
Marcus’ Housework nights, and the popularity
of their recent Vibe 101 radio slots, I’d
been expecting a bigger turn-out from the funky
house fanatics. One can only assume that Mr Vedo
had been missed and that clubbers found the electricity
in the main room too much to resist. None of the
DJs failed to deliver though. And all in all, it
turned into one wet and wild party!
Grabbing a quick chat with Marc prior to the event,
it’s refreshing to note how down to earth
and thoroughly nice he really is. On the night,
a whole horde of girls could be found streaming
around the DJ box, trying to find an excuse to grab
a word in his ear or throw their knickers at him
(ok, so that was me…but they were clean!).
Like a true professional, he hardly seemed to notice
and, to his credit, this magnetism and focus also
reflect in his DJing ability. Marc is something
of a local hero it seems; and quite rightly so.
Taunton is no city of big dreams after all. So a
DJ who starts off here and goes on to travel the
length and breadth of the world; to do what Marc
has, has undoubtedly proved himself to be one Kool
fish. Although, one would hope, he smells a whole
lot better.
Keep up to date with future Koolwaters events worldwide
at www.koolwaters.com |
Venue: 8
Music: 9
Crowd: 7
Sound System: 8
Total: 32 / 40
Rating: Silver |
| Review written by:
Pam Thomas |
pammy@uk-cl.co.uk |
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