Timillustrator

There really are literally hundreds and hundreds of venues playing all tempos and across the board, probably 90% of events on Soul Source. By me I can usually choose from about 8-10 events a weekend, within an hour but to be honest there's not much to distinguish them and I go for the one with the cleanest dancefloor. There's probably less than a dozen playing uptempo all night (or even the majority of the night), Grosvenor Rooms, Wigan Empire, Sherwood Forest, The Boat, Willington, Macclesfield, Macabre Soul, Lea Hall, some of them are occasional. Please do keep it up, it would be a shame for everything to turn out the same.

You clearly can't please all the people all the time. If it was 100mph it'd be a fixture in my calendar.

This is always a bit of a polarising event, there are a lot quick to jump on it on social media as an example of how the scene is going down the drain, but it ticks all the boxes. There are three crucial elements to any do - the venue, the music and the crowd (obviously, but stick with me). As a venue this is absolutely second to none, the architecture, the acoustics, the atmosphere, the dance floor just cannot be faulted; the staff are OK and apart from minor niggles like catering and queues at the bar (which aren't really an issue at all) it's all good, hell they even put jugs of ice water out for people! The music reflects what's going on with the world, fair range of DJs and styles, who can criticise Sean Chapman, Mark Freeman and Ted Massey? The latter even throwing in Bernadine and a few other neverplayeds; again on the negative side both House For Sale and I Wanna Give You Tomorrow made an appearance in the main room - but we all need a toilet break at some point (eh Andrew ). Sound system is about as perfect as you can get - I've heard a hell of a lot worse and the record screens are great, you can actually read them unlike a few other places. Finally the crowd, well what can you say, there's a mix of people, all ages, from across the country. Mix of backgrounds but many regular faces on the scene, half a dozen dancers from the rest of this year's all-nighters were there. Perhaps more spillages on the dancefloor and corridors than you'd like but again the staff are on it straightaway, but it's far, far from a handbag event. You could end up sitting next to some drinkers but hey, post lockdown you gotta do what you gotta do - alcohol has certainly helped me get through it. As other people have said in the past, this won't be here forever and when it's gone there's not much else that comes close on all fronts. I like how dark it is too, good excuse for my sketches being "impressionistic" (crap ), didn't finish the DJ one and then my pens started running out.

Booked this a while back basically on the grounds of it being a Town Hall, the DJ line up was pretty decent too though so it was worth a punt. Well it turned out pretty darn good - the venue isn't massive, as Town Halls go it was pretty tiny and as a result it was packed. Dancefloor was great though and a variety of tunes. Major disappointment of the night for me was getting there at about 9 to hear I've Only Got Myself To Blame fading away (title says it all!) my fault for not getting there for 8. Still some good stuff and Ashley always delivers, you often find with "new" venues that promoters and DJ's play it safe by playing to the floor but that wasn't really the case tonight. People had travelled from the Black Country as well as Birmingham and Worcs so quite a few faces there. Sketches were a bit off, nowhere to sit at first and then that beautiful ceiling confused me! Overall a surprisingly great venue though, worth another go, just hope they keep it fresh and interesting.

Great to see this one back. The first (?) one at this venue was the penultimate event I went to before the first lockdown so 17 months later, older and wiser, it seemed almost surreal to return; as if none of this had happened! Not a big place but nice set up, close to the Town Centre (if you can find it) and decent sound. No real surprises but great sets all round, sadly I missed Ted Wilson early in the night, the first hour and a half was live-streamed. Two legendary Birmingham DJ's and not a bad track played. Last time I came the dance floor was a bit 'sticky' but they've sorted that out and it was excellent, no black gunge on your shoes at all. Nice crowd too. I've drawn bugger all for the last 17 months so was quite pleased how these two turned out and didn't make the mistake I did last week of taking a bright blue pen and not realising in the dark that it wasn't grey. It's now monthly and, if it gets the support, long may it continue.