Summer Siesta

Well, what a week it has been in London, the sequence of rioting events that unfolded on Saturday and then on Monday before our very eyes, left us totally shell shocked and wondering just what sort of society we were & are living within. The sheer scale of unlawfulness, the burning of buildings, the looting & the violence, some virtually on the doorstep of our bolthole in Clapham, has in some ways mirrored the waves of criticism, vocal attacks & condemnation of the very core of our activity, our website review writing.

Review Raping

Now, this criticism of our reviews is not new, indeed during the time we have been writing about the scene & reporting on bars, clubs & events, our forthright, honest & open attitude to our reviews has landed us in hot water with scene promoters, club owners and even clubbers themselves. Casting our minds back, coverage of Matinee’s NYD event in 2009, Hype’s the same year & Matador last March are three vivid examples of the intense fault finding which also transcended into personal attacks that proved immensely upsetting.

That said, on the flipside, the level of support we receive from the vast majority of our review writing & reporting has been the solder in the broken joint that the critiscm has caused. We have always taken heart from the sheer volume of clubbers that walk “come up and say hi”, along the scores of scene figureheads, club promoters, D.J.’s, artists, etc, etc, we have been privileged to meet during our time, all who make what we do worthwhile. We never search for this praise, yet we also never expect the very personal attacks that have resulted from our review work.

During 2011 we have tried to deflect this criticism by evolving our review structure. In the early part of the year we launched our “Preview The Review” reports, aimed providing a rapid reflection of events attended in prelude to the full review, although these themselves became the reviews but, for us, were short on delivery. Our reviews always had a distinct beginning & end, perhaps the two parts that cased the criticism we are perhaps seeking to avoid, yet are important aspects of our review work that we cannot escape. So, with the formation of the our now popular “Nibble Size” reviews, formed via live Twitter tweets, we decided it was time to bring back those intro & outro elements but by creating “Bite Size & “Full Size” reviews to bridge that gap between rapid reflection & review robustness.

Animosity Angst

However, having restored our former review structure, it seems we have once again entered a phase of this wave of criticism, waged following our recent reviews of Barcode & A:M, both examples of our forthright & honest reporting that has been met with the kind of condemnation that has taken the wind out of our sails. This criticism has not only affected our resolve but has interrupted the very flow of our work (commonly known as writers block) and we find ourselves floundering, our determination dented, our passion punctured & our mind in a muddle. This has caused a knock-on effect that has severely impacted on our state of health & well-being, attacks of lethargy & listlessness now common place, thus waking us up to the fact that we need to take action to remedy this precarious position we find ourselves within.

So, as the capital picks up the pieces of its unprecedented civil disorder, asks itself questions and then attempts to find solutions to the causes of all the unrest, we too enter a short phase of soul searching, also examining the very nature of the criticism waged against us a solver a remedy to this rampage on our reviews. And to do this we have decided to take a Summer Siesta combined with a Clubbing Curfew, resting our reviews and stepping back from the scene in an attempt to re-charge our resolve, re-focus our efforts and restore our wellbeing. This news will probably be met with joy by our fiercest of critics, but while they bask in their supposed victorious glory, like London, we will not give up to thuggery, rather re-gather & rebuild.

There are outstanding website reviews of Beyond & Later which we will want to complete with the quickest of speed, following which we will immerse ourselves into this period of soul searching and then self healing, hopefully coming back stronger & more steadfast in our review resolve. During this time of reflection, we will be continuing our writing, delving into our passion for music with newsletters, D.J. focuses & the like. And we will not be starving you of our scene coverage, with previews of upcoming events still very much on our agenda, new club Brava & the August Bank Holiday just two on the agenda & part of that promise.

As for our website review return?, well all things being equal, we will be back on stream by the end of August, while our commitments to others will be restored by the Bank Holiday, meaning you should be seeing us stepping back onto the scene sometime soon. (DISCO MATT)

Clubbing Curfew

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