Printworks is victim of its own exceptionalism - Kerri Chandler and John Talabot at Printworks review

Old printing press turned warehouse rave is a one-of-a-kind venue and in its third season

On the way to Printworks, I went past ‘Kingdom of Sweets’, one of those cutesy sweet shops in central London that exclusively serves tourists who are drawn to the British export of twee nostalgia, and children under the age of 9. The ‘Replant’ of Floorplan’s ‘Never Grow Old’ was blasting out of the shop’s speakers, the decidedly more intense and warehouse-friendly version of Robert Hood’s 2013 techno classic. Is this what techno and house hegemony looked like? Is this uniformly a good thing, or should we worry about what might get lost on this culture’s journey from studio and club to Leicester Square tourist trap? These questions would become relevant later on.

Printworks, a converted industrial space in Canada Water that used to be one of the biggest printing presses in Europe, is in its third season of electronic music events after opening in Spring 2017. The fact that it is an unparalleled venue in London is obvious the second you step into the long faux-tunnel that operates as its main dance floor. A second floor platform sandwiches the roughly 70 metre corridor on either side, with warehouse pipes, cabins and railings dotted above your head. An elevated DJ booth-altar lies at one end, and long light panels both stationary and on moving platforms throughout.

With space for only about 12 people across, the corridor contained a porridge of bodies jostling for position right from the front to the back, for London big-rave regular Hydra’s offering of Job Jobse, Red Axes, John Talabot, Kerri Chandler and others. The light show had been developed since last year’s events, and was undoubtedly the venue’s strongest asset - it's not a space you would really be able to lose yourself in . The building is sound-proofed due to the two to three million copies of the Evening Standard and Metro newspapers that used to be printed every day on heavy duty machinery, so the sound is impeccable – and more level throughout the tunnel compared to previous events too, due to speakers placed periodically along the sides.

The crowd representation of sub-cultures was remarkably varied, at least of those with a disposable income to afford the £30+ entry and £6 drinks. With a capacity of 5,000, out in force were the old-timers, festival sesh heads, shufflers, Shoreditch house platinum members; your management consultants on the hunt for some cultural capital; large groups of uni pals who want a #squad day out and don’t want to wait for festival season; your online influencers for whom Printworks’ light show is a must-add for their Insta story. (Ravers were pleased to learn that the veggie burger stand inside the venue did in fact take AmEx, contrary to initial fears.)

The overriding feature was that the event seemed a rare excursion to an acclaimed venue for most punters, the kind of culture they didn’t care for regularly, but with a end time of 11pm, people could arrive, get mashed and go home at a reasonable hour. Obviously, day parties are important and can be great – however, the clear apathy of a large majority of the crowd to dance or interact with the music revealed a certain touristic mentality to their presence.

No-one should begrudge a large quantity of people attending events for lots of different reasons; it remains true that the atmosphere is less enjoyable and less substantive if people seem indifferent to the tunes being played. This remains a facet of a huge proportion of clubbing in London, and perhaps unsurprising for the parties that cost the most, like this one. That being said, I’ve seen bigger reactions to tunes being played out in clubs with much worse reputations for conspicuous consumption, than I did here.

The light show was most abrasive and impressive for Job Jobse’s afternoon slot, when the crowd started packing out the rafters. The Amsterdam selector played a diverse set that snuck in trance, italo, and even elements of a mid-2000s, Animal Collective-esque electro-pop sound. Finishing on The R’s ‘Higher’, a track immensely nostalgic for the 1990s but released only last year, whose female vocal shouting “Hi-igher!” was an alluring intimation towards the rest of the evening to come.

Red Axes played what felt like a disappointingly homogeneous house set; an immersive, Ibiza-tinged sound that felt limited after half an hour, with little progression. The ominous, the haunting and the mischievous that typify many of both the productions and sets of Red Axes seemed largely absent - but enjoyably present for John Talabot. The Barcelona native followed and seemed to successfully achieve what Red Axes set out to do, tunes that gave the crowd more the go on, melodically and rhythmically. The eerie French vocal of ‘Futur Parle’ by Essaie Pas, as well as the swirling tranciness of Oracy’s ‘Family Day’ were both predictably enjoyable in the writhing tunnel.

If Talabot played the venue he was dealt (and very well), Kerri Chandler played the crowd he was dealt, as about half way through his two hours he glided from Karizma’s ‘Work It Out’ to Floorplan’s ‘Never Grow Old’, and then Armand van Helden’s ‘You Don’t Know Me’ to Liem’s ‘If Only’, in an astonishing run of guilty gateway bangers. As his set drew to a close, it was hard in such a venue not to have immense fun to his classic remix of The System’s ‘You’re In My System’, though it was not totally clear if that many others were doing so too.