What happens when a newsletter throws a party?

There is a very specific kind of hubris involved in spending several months writing about London nightlife and then deciding you should probably have a go at organising some of it yourself. So last Saturday, FrontLeft threw its first party.

I was extremely nervous about this. This is largely because I am an idiot who had apparently forgotten that organising a party means being responsible for whether people actually have a good time. Thankfully, it turns out that throwing the sort of party you’d actually want to go to is a reasonably good place to start.

There’s something very different about standing in a venue knowing that the reason everyone is there is, at least partly, because you told them to be there. What if nobody turns up? What if everyone turns up and hates it? What if the music is bad? What if the drinks run out? What if somebody asks me where the toilets are and I suddenly realise I have somehow become a promoter?

Thankfully, none of these things happened. Well, I definitely got asked where the toilets were.

Instead, it turned into exactly the sort of night I’d hoped FrontLeft could create. We filled a room with people who read the newsletter, people I’ve met through going out in London, DJs who have featured in FrontLeft and, inevitably, a fairly ridiculous number of people I consider friends. Some people met for the first time, some bumped into each other after months apart, and on several occasions I looked across the dancefloor and thought, slightly bewildered, "how do I know all of these people?"

That was really the point of doing it.

FrontLeft has always been about more than just telling you which DJs are playing where. Actually, if anything, I hate writing The Briefing each week: event listings are my least favourite part of everything FrontLeft. Moving on. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about crowds, friendships, weird little moments, smoking areas, queues, clubs that get things right and clubs that very much do not. The best nights out are rarely just about the person standing behind the decks. They’re about the strange social ecosystem that forms around them.

So when it came to throwing a FrontLeft party, there wasn’t much point trying to invent something completely different. We just tried to throw the sort of party we like going to.

Good DJs. A room where you can actually dance. A crowd that wants to be there. Friends scattered throughout the place. No nonsense. No pretending this is somehow more important than a bunch of people getting together on a Saturday night and having a good time. I think that simplicity was probably what made the night work.

There was something genuinely lovely about watching the newsletter turn into a physical thing for a few hours. People who have spent the last few months reading my increasingly lengthy opinions about London nightlife and enthusing to me about them were suddenly standing in front of me asking why I hadn’t mentioned something in the latest edition. Other people I'd never met introduced themselves and told me they’d been reading for months. I repeatedly had the slightly surreal thought: "Oh shit, this actually worked."

Weird as it may seem, I've never really felt like I've fit in anywhere, and so this was a really nice full-circle moment.

It also reminded me why I started FrontLeft in the first place. London nightlife can sometimes feel like an industry built around making things seem bigger, more exclusive and more important than they actually are.

I’d much rather make something that brings people together. For a little while, we had 50 people together in a small room to celebrate not just the newsletter, but old and new friends and some absolutely stellar DJs.

So thank you to everyone who came down, danced, drank, chatted, introduced themselves, brought friends, or simply spent a few hours in a room with us. It was a pretty perfect way to throw our first party.

And, crucially, I’m now considerably less terrified about doing it again. Same again in 2027, perhaps?

I find myself coming back to this HAAi set at DJ Mag this week. Recorded last year (and you can see me pushing my way behind the decks in the opening as I search for some elbow room) it's a good mix of techno and breaks with some solid commercial hits in there to get you jumping.

HAAi is a natural performer, and it really comes across here. What a set.

I've been having a slightly weird week.

Nothing particularly dramatic has happened. It's just been one of those periods where my brain seems to have decided that now would be an excellent time to examine every available thought under a microscope, find three more things to worry about and generally make itself very busy.

Which is probably why I've been listening to an absolutely stupid amount of dance music.

There is something about electronic music that I find particularly useful when I'm not actually dancing. It doesn't necessarily change how you feel. Sometimes a really good techno record is still just a really good techno record. But it gives your brain something to concentrate on, which can be surprisingly valuable when it's otherwise determined to run through every possible scenario.

There's a particular moment when you put on a track you know well and the first few sounds come in. Maybe it's a kick you've heard a hundred times. Maybe it's a synth line that you know is going to arrive in another thirty seconds. Maybe it's a song you thought was new but you've heard before at 4am somewhere. Your brain recognises it before you've really thought about it.

That's one of the things I've come to love about dance music. It doesn't demand that you feel a particular way. You don't have to be happy to listen to it. You don't have to be having a particularly productive day. You don't even have to be particularly interested in yourself.

The music just keeps going.

A lot of music is incredibly interested in what you're feeling. It wants to tell you a story about heartbreak or happiness or longing or nostalgia. It wants you to sit with an emotion and examine it from every possible angle.

Dance music can be much less interested in that. Sometimes it's just: here's a kick drum. Here's another kick drum. Here's a hi-hat. Here's a noise that sounds like a spaceship falling down a flight of stairs. Enjoy.

And when your brain is already doing too much, that simplicity can be incredibly useful. I've found myself putting records on this week while working, cooking, cleaning, lying on the sofa, scrolling through my phone and doing absolutely nothing. Sometimes I'll put on a mix I've heard a hundred times because I don't want to think particularly hard about what I'm listening to. I know where it's going. I know the transitions. I know the tracks.

There's something lovely about that familiarity.

It's also one of the reasons I think clubs can be so good. When you're dancing, there is already so much happening that you don't have much opportunity to overthink things. You're thinking about the music. You're thinking about your body. You're thinking about the person dancing next to you. You're wondering when the next track is going to drop. You're trying not to spill your drink. You're occasionally wondering why the bloke behind you has decided that your spine is an acceptable dancefloor boundary.

For a few hours, you are simply occupied and I think that's an underrated feeling. But you don't need to be in a club to feel it, necessarily.

We're increasingly encouraged to make everything mean something. Every feeling needs to be understood. Every bad day needs a lesson. Every bit of anxiety needs to be processed, discussed, journalled about or turned into a podcast.

Sometimes you can just listen to some tunes.

There is a difference between avoiding something forever and giving yourself a bit of space from it. You don't have to turn every strange feeling into a project. Sometimes you can do something you enjoy and let your attention sit somewhere else for a while.

I've been listening to old favourites and new records and mixes from DJs I've seen recently. I've been putting things on because I remember how they made me feel in a club.

That's another thing I love about dance music. It creates these little geographical shortcuts in your brain. You hear something and you're suddenly back at Fold. You're in the middle of a sweaty room at 4am. You're standing in KOKO's smoking area with a drink in your hand. You're walking home as the sun comes up. You're in some festival field you've forgotten the name of.

You're standing next to someone you haven't spoken to in months, both of you grinning like idiots because the DJ has just played the track you've been waiting for.

You don't have to consciously remember any of it. The music does the remembering for you. I think that's why it's been so useful this week. Not because it has fixed anything, or because I particularly need it to. It's just been nice to have something I can put on and immediately enjoy.

A really good record can make washing the dishes less boring. A familiar DJ set can make a walk home feel a bit more like the start of something. A track you haven't heard in years can suddenly remind you of a night, a person or a place you hadn't thought about in ages.

That's a pretty good trick for a bunch of sounds coming out of some headphones.

I don't think music fixes anything. I don't think a really good record is going to solve whatever weirdness you've got going on, and I don't think you should use dancing as a substitute for dealing with things that actually need dealing with.

But I also don't think every distraction needs to be productive. Sometimes you can just listen to something because you like it and you need to kill a couple of days for your brain to get its shit together.

Sometimes, that feels useful. A kick drum. A bassline. Some stupidly euphoric synth. A mix I've heard a hundred times. Something familiar enough that I don't have to think particularly hard about it, but interesting enough to keep my attention.

There are plenty of reasons I love clubs. The people, the ridiculous hours, the feeling of a room moving together, the occasional moment when a DJ gets everything exactly right.

But sometimes I think I just like pressing play.

Friday

• MoS 35: Andy C - 3-Hour Extended Set Ministry Of Sound
• Cabin Fever: Margaret Dygas, Roman Flügel b2b Lola Haro, Edward, Stevie Cox & Control Freak Fold
• Decadence presents: Detention Itzel Club

Saturday

• Max Cooper (All Night Long), DVS1, Dasha Rush, Jasmín, Pattn, Redfreya, Moritz Fabric
• Transmissions x Breakfast Club with Helena Hauff, Nicolas Lutz Fold
• NOT A SPACE RAVE X Metanoia Munster Munch

Sunday

• Fossil Archive presents: Alan Fitzpatrick, R.M.K, Aniaef The Glove That Fits

• Andy Burnham has said he doesn't support decriminalisation of personal drug consumption, boo.
• I missed this last week, but bus passengers in Singapore can now be fined up to $500 Singapore dollars (around £295) for playing music on their phone. I wish we would see something similar here.
• UK-based DJ and seeming manchild Kirollus has had a shocker of a week, announcing a women's-only event and then blocking and making shitty comments about the women that called the event out. The post (and stories) were all deleted when his management caught up with him, and I'd recommend reading these Instagram posts from Eves' Drop Collective and Noyb if you wanted to get the context. I know I'll probably steer clear of him in future.