Monkey Business in the Steel City

It's Monday morning & I feel 'familiar'. Smashed & creaky, laced with aches & bruises, but warm in the afterglow of what's gone before. Many, many times before.


If I'm honest, I've forgotten how many times I've headed up the M1 to play at Urban Gorilla. Despite never having been offically named as a 'super resident', I must have played for them as often as anyone over the years, although during this time we'd never had the opportunity to play one of our Elite Force Vs Meat Katie b2b sets. Until now.

I'm always unsure as to whether to kick these sessions off myself or defer to the might of the little guy, but the excellent Adam Connell had set things up a little deeper than normal, which allowed for more of a gradual build into the night (and it hadn't been that quick to fill up, so we wanted to pace the night). After a toss of a coin (I lost) Mark decided he'd begin, saying "I have an idea where to go with this" ... so, intrigued, I stood back & watch him light the touch paper. However, rather than the fuse ticking down over the agreed 30 minutes or so, he simply stepped up and smashed the fuck out of it straight off the bat, and within 4 tracks was playing as peaktime as it's feasible to get.




I love doing these sets with Mark to be honest - they keep you thinking on your feet and often throw strange, curved shapes into the flow of the night which take you off on ever wilder tangents, but despite this fact I think we both have a feel for when to rein it back and keeps the beats on lockdown for a while. The hours flew by, and before we knew it, the house lights were up & all around us was carnage, not least of all behind the booth where a gaggle of us had somehow seen off two bottle of Jack Daniels. Before I could holler "Oi, Pember, Behave!", he'd sequestered a third from the barman, and we polished it off during a lock-in that saw us emerge, stupified, into the cold steel morning at beyond breakfast time.