Smile High Club

Smile High Club is an event run by Fatboy Slim which debuted at SW4 and Creamfields festivals back in August. On January 2nd a Smile High Club event was held at Tobacco Dock in London which I went to.

The DJs I particularly went to see were Erol Alkan, 2 Many DJs and Fatboy Slim himself. It was also an all day event running from 13:00 - 23:00.

Annoyingly they didn't announce the set times prior to the event. In their own words - Set times TBA on the day – arrive early & enjoy the event! However, I had no intention of arriving early as 10 hours in the same building is too long for my liking and £5 for a tin of beer is too expensive to not having cheaper beer from home beforehand.

Fortunately somebody tweeted a picture of the set times an hour or so after the event began. There I discovered there were two rooms with Fatboy Slim playing the last set in one room and 2 Many DJs playing the last set in the other room therefore I had to choose between them. As I've seen Fatboy Slim before but am yet to see 2 Many DJs I went for the latter.

Arriving at the venue early evening time I first took a look around the venue which was quite interesting. I then went to find the cloakroom to find there wasn't one, instead you had to pay £5 for a locker but there wasn't any lockers left. Then I found the toilets only to find they were VIP toilets and instead had to go to the other end of the venue and queue for a ridiculously long time to use the normal ones, though I did get to hear some of SecondCity during this time which was ok.

Heading to the second room where I would spend the rest of the evening, this was actually an indoor car park and in my opinion much better than the other room and quite possibly bigger too. It was also much cooler in there which was handy given I still had my coat.

PBR Streetgang were playing an enjoyable set of house music at the time. Then Erol Alkan came on with lots a smoke going off such that anyone could have been playing and I'd be none the wiser. It did sound very much like Erol Alkan though with his usual blend of Electro House music. Towards the end of his set there was a mass exodus of people presumably going to the other room to see Fatboy Slim.

Then 2 Many DJs came doing plenty of mashups mixed in with House music. As the set went on the room started to fill up again with people who presumably couldn't get into the other room. Towards the end of the set they went old skool playing tunes like Pump up the Jam, House Nation and Blue Monday. All in all a very good set and the right decision to see them.