'HISTORY OF DISCO FESTIVAL @ OVAL SPACE' (12/8/17)

Fever 105’s ‘Summer of Love Disco Festival’ back in June was a special night for everyone that attended, as the disco spirit funked each individual’s soul; helping them to groove the night away. Due to the large success, huge anticipation and excitement loomed as they announced their next summer event – ‘The History of Disco Festival’. If the name and description of the event ‘a super groovy showdown of everything disco’ didn’t excite one enough, the fact that Fever 105 announced the headliner on the night to be hacienda disco legend – Greg Wilson sent interest through the roof, as they completely sold out Oval Space once again.

Having arrived at around 11pm, the disco was already in full swing with the Credit to the Edit DJs (Derek Kaye, Peza and Henry Greenwood) providing funkadelic vibes with some classic disco such as Loleatta Holloway’s ‘Love Sensation’, whilst also playing some insanely good re-edits of other disco classics such as ‘Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’ (Indeep) and ‘You Know how to Love Me’ (Phyllis Hyman). From all around the dancefloor, the vast amount of disco – lovers in attendance felt the pounding funky bass flowing through their veins and were getting down and groovy under the ever impressive disco ball, which gleamed bright over the purple laser lights that were bouncing around the room. Every now and then, a smoke machine at the front of the dancefloor would fill the room and your vision would be restricted to silhouettes of various different groovers cutting all kinds of shapes and records dangling from the ceiling. As the night broke into the early hours of Sunday morning, more and more people were packing in to Oval Space to make sure they were there to see the master behind the decks – Greg Wilson. The clock ticked ever closer towards 1:30am, the Credit to the Edit DJs had done a fantastic job in warming up the crowd with their sensational mixing and were given due credit with a large round of applause as Greg Wilson appeared from outback. He carried an overwhelming sense of coolness with him as he swept back his longhair and prepared to enter the mix.

As per usual, Greg began mixing with his editing-analogue tape, which has been a prominent part of his mixing throughout his career and is something unique that adds to his legendary status. Greg has pioneered the re-editing movement since the 70s and still does an unbelievable job of showcasing his editing skills when he mixes today – such as he showed on the night. The process involves manually using reel-to-reel tape to cut and paste parts of existing songs to form new ones. The fact that Greg mixes live with edits that he sits down and manually prepares just shows how impressive a DJ he is. He oozes creativity and selects the best records to edit, which is what has made him so successful. He entered the mix with the obscure, funky – ‘cocaine’ by Dr.Packer which provided a perfect thumping beat and cool riff to kick-start the set, before a super cool rendition of ‘Hypnotize’ by Biggie Smalls blared out. From the moment the set began there was only good vibes in the room and everyone that had turned up to see the legend at work seemed to be having a great time. Greg played many obscure tracks and re-edits which are largely unheard of but just sound so good that you just want to listen to the mix over and over again on his sound cloud. When his 2 hour slot drew to a close, he was duly credited with a large round of applause and many cheers as he had been responsible for providing everyone with a night to remember. 

At 3:30am, it was time for Jamie 3:26 to provide his American disco sounds to Oval Space, all the way from Chicago. He did an excellent job of keeping the crowd going for the rest of the event, playing a variety of well-selected records that fit the disco-environment perfectly. An example record that he mixed in was a lovely edit of Sister Sledge’s ‘Lost in Music’ which was very well received and gives you a good idea of the sounds and vibes he was providing. The spirit of disco kept everyone going until the early hours of the morning, when at around 6am, The History of Disco Festival came to a close. It was a fantastic night and proved to be even better than the previous event, which shows that Fever 105 events just seem to be getting better and better. The next event is set to be held in an intimate space which will hold up to around 300 people, with ‘Red Greg’ and ‘Mafalda’ set to be delivering disco, funk, soul, boogie and rare groove records all night long on Halloween. This looks set to be another great disco, with good music and good people.