Labrynth 12 Dalston Lane

While reading Iain Sinclair's excellent 'Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire' one of the chapters he is talking to a woman who went to a hardcore club in Dalston called Labrynth and it sounded amazing from her description, as it really was a Labrynth but she stopped going once jungle became the predominant sound which she found made the club more aggressive and the drugs harder.

Looked up on Youtube and there is some footage and it looks dead fun, thought other people here might enjoy it, maybe its jazz as well? Actually I might of posted this before... Also considering the 90's are so hot now the fashion doesn't look to massively different from now.

Edit: Clearly Dalston peaked in 1993.

93 footage

http://youtu.be/nV4gbc2WaYE

http://youtu.be/n42BPYAP-1c

http://youtu.be/npqp4SfQnqI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRQohKaCw7Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anKTnFT1u2U

http://youtu.be/Kn5IVu_I3kk

1992

http://youtu.be/G79aSfp9lcM

this song is great

So when I started uni in 1993 in west london the guys I hung out with used to go to Labrynth. This was the peak of the mainstream aftermath of the 89 acid house thing - with the prodigy in the charts and Shamen's 'Ebineezer Goode' being at No 1. But no-one listened to the chart stuff, it was all happy hardcore from pirate radio stations. You never knew what the tracks were or who they were by. I've tracked down some of it since, like Acen.

So they used to go to Labrynth a lot. I never went clubbing with them because (a) I didn't want to do the drugs and (b) was too self conscious to dance without them. But they used to go, take some Es and spend all night there and come back early morning. This was all pre-internet (the internet existed but was mostly people on usenet talking about monty python and star trek) and so the way to find out about clubs was through the psychadelic flyers that inevitably involved smileys and stereoscopic images. The music was being played on pirate radio everywhere and everyone had a collection of cassettes that they had recorded from the radio.

I just watched through all those videos half expecting to see my old mates there. Looking at it now its suprising how much everyone's clothes still look a bit 80s. I always wondered what Labyrnth was like - what I was missing - and it does look pretty epic.

As mentioned above, eventually the harder jungle scene pushed out the happy hardcore and so the people I knew stopped going to Labyrnth. Whirl-Y-Gig was also a big deal at the time (and is still going I think?).

Hmm, seems Labrynth are still going too - 25th anniversary event this saturday at Club Colosseum

looks crazy