Drum & Bass Domination at Club Hide
photos & story by Mike Zelezak

The split-level Club Hide warehouse at Seventh and Folsom on Saturday venue is usually a no-frills, rock and punk venue, but the booking agents embrace variety a few nights per month. On July 29, drum and bass artists bucked their typical back/side-room status to take over the club’s cavernous main room.

The freeform interpreters of the woofer-dependent genre were fenced off from the audience by equipment in a restricted petting-zoo of lyricists. MC Child visibly struggled with the stage layout and was meek compared to his more experienced peers who sung later in the evening. This initial disconnect with the audience was unusual for such a small venue, but chivalrous DJs assisted ladies to mount the amps post-medianoche. Not unnoticed, a mostly female contingent dominated the club thus kicking the stereotype of a male-dominated jungle night.

One of the night’s attendees, Debbie, appreciated the steady build of MC-vigor throughout the night as the venue reached fire-code capacity. She said earplugs became a must as Femme Fatale’s forearm tatts flexed while operating his heavy machinery. Last up on the decks were Mathematics who did not struggle to make everyone (including the bartenders) move. They passed the NYC-UK jungle torch to the headlining duo of John and Matt, Cyantific, who kept the connection with the Left Coast audience.

Despite the quality beats, intermittent retreats to the upstairs house room or Hide’s open-air terrace menagerie with Asian statuary allowed for some D&B relief and hearing preservation. Another SoMA regular, Beth, admitted she was not impressed with the night’s noise—alluding to the difficulty the style has standing on its own with the signature syncopation becoming tedious. She noted her preference for the sound coming from the curiously near-empty House room, and that she’ll be attending the Summer Music Conference (formerly known as the San Francisco Love Parade) in a few weeks to hear a buffet of all styles with a small helping of D&B instead.

Much of the jungle talent from this night has been graciously invited to that massive to perform to city crowds electronic driven crowds the city has not seen since September 2005!

For more information on the chill Club Hide, check out SFClubHide.com and you can find more information about Cyantific at HospitalRecords.com and Mathematics at SocialStudiesMusic.com.