Music > Live Reviews
Miami Nice DJ night
Bedfords
11/11/16
Bygone times are back again, or perhaps they never left. Like musical manna from heaven, a treasure trove of tunes was unearthed and opened up over a sound system on Miami Nice's third fixture. A whole scrapbook of sounds from the 80's was presented to be pored over by the crowd in the packed Bedford's Crypt. But it wasn't nostalgia that was bringing smiles to faces on this latest outing by the Miami Nice Squad. No recollection of times when these tunes first graced the airwaves and ley lines over this sceptred isle so many moons ago. Most of the crowd were born in the early 90's - post-Punk, post-Funk, post-Soul. Post-Disco. Bronski Beat might ordinarily seem a generic choice, a simple filler to keep people on the floor. But emerging as it did amongst a sometimes surreal selection of carefully maintained vinyl sensations, Smalltown Boy was a spine-tingling epiphany. Several similarly familiar songs sounded out, but the majority of tunes were obscure, unknown to seemingly all except the Nice Squad maestros behind the delirious decks. The result was a montage of Italo-Disco, New-Wave, Boogie, Electro - an uplifting, sometimes comical, experience, the effect of which could be read on the perpetually smiling faces of the throbbing, dancing crowd.
I thought I didn't like this kind of stuff - in fact I didn't. I grew up in the 80's, but I grew up on metal and punk. Music to mosh to. Fighting more than dancing. But I like it now, or I did that night, played out to a crowd who just could not resist the appeal of that sound, and who congregated on the buzz it generated. Italo-Disco may have been originally produced in people's bedrooms, drum-machines pounding out a four-to-the-floor rhythm, but I don't honestly think I could sit at home and listen to this on my own. I had been to the first instalment of Miami Nice, but found it too surreal to dance to tunes I had repudiated in my heyday, so didn't stay long. But when I arrived at the venue this time, and saw people as they arrived in two's and three's, dressed up to fit in and beaming and boogieing to this cheery phenomenon, I found myself loving every moment, loving everyone there for adding to the buzz. I had one ginger beer all night, loving the sound system where people were packing themselves in to vibe out to the bassy undertones that added to the whole sensuality of the evening. My cheeks ached from an irresistible urge to just laugh out loud at this newfound feeling. The crew have definitely struck on something. A kind of rediscovered gem, that they've polished up and put back in it's rightful place above a heart-warming fire. The driving force behind modern artists such as Daft Punk, the Correspondents and Florence and the Machine, this sound had a resurgence in the Netherlands in the mid-noughties and is treasured by Trap producers.
How does someone like me know? Because I researched it in the days after the event, in a kind of wanderlust, to try and fathom the depths of this dancefloor delight. And on the way I discovered one thing: Miami Nice is not just a night to remember - it's a time to recall.