Allez-Allez at Moustache

Club night last week. Yeah, my now-virtually-annual excursion, if you discount shite late bars in the capital’s suburbs or Shoreditch chinwags. Last week was birthday week for a mate and I, and as the calendar squeezes the life out of flexibility we made sure to reserve this date. Starting at a pub in Stokey and having a quick beard-count – we were 50 per cent facially covered so were fairly representative of the earnest groups in the Butchers.

There were other late-night candidates, but Allez-Allez at Moustache bar below the hairdressers on Stoke Newington Road really hit the spot. Dan and I saw this lot at New Cross nearly three years ago and they play an excellent blend of 80s (obviously) house and disco with more modern staff and the odd rock tune. The biggest and most misjudged curveball luckily did not take things a turn for the worse, as the music took on a pleasing Carpenter-esque industrial sleaze direction in the later hours. They also played that dancefloor-upsetting number from Kassem Mosse on the Non-Plus label. It wasn’t a big crowd down there because of the size of the place, but Allez-Allez playing for free and it being free to get in generated a good atmosphere. Probably too late to pull off another logistical feat and get to my gig of the year of course.

But I should recognise the revivalist role of the sense-evaporating back-to-mine, Steve working the decks for four hours or so through his definition of House-Techno-Funk – Carl Craig, Recloose . Isolee, Matthew Jonson, Green Velvet, et al. Being honest, I probably didn’t need the good natured quizzing of what each tune was as serotonin levels slowly depleted in the early hours, but it probably helped us stay up until Andrew Marr’s show was the obvious signal to call it a night. Nice to occasionally do it.