DJ Sneak in Leeds

Twaddle
DJ Sneak + residents
Stinky’s Peephouse, Leeds
19/02/2010
Soonnight photo report

It’s clear from the queues which snake either side of the entrance to the venue formerly, and now once again, known as Stinky’s Peephouse, that Twaddle has come a long way in 4 years. Initially a party soundtracked by local talent in a 50 capacity Cafe basement, it’s now a brand known from Leeds to London. The monthly event so impressed Matt Tolfrey when he first visited, he happily signed up to become a resident and thus oiled the already nicely turning Twaddle machine.

Tonight, though, they have no one but themselves to thank for the queues outside: they've secured a 3 hour slot from someone not often seen in the city, DJ Sneak. Enjoying something of a renaissance courtesy of the track-y, tech-house revival spearheaded by Dutch labels and players like 100% Pure, Julian Chaptal et al. Sneak is as big a draw now as he has ever been.

Before the ’gar chugging chunk steps up tonight, however, there is a full – and I mean full – club of people to warm up, but not overheat, before what is sure to be a massively jacking assault from Sneak. Charged with said role are b2b residents Brother Bull and Skippa who take up their duties with great aplomb. Treading a line between subtle groovers and cute tempo raising numbers, they move those from at the bar to the fringes of the increasingly dense dance floor, and turn nodding heads into a full-on mass of dropping shoulders, bouncing bodies and shifting feet.

If the student core which made up early Twaddle parties in Headingly is still in attendance, the usual slights of such a crowd do not apply here: there are no awkward glances, pretentions of any kind nor stuffy overtones. Instead, the mix of fashionistas and outcasts, hoodies and handbags, wreckers and un-inebriated all make for a vocal and engaging atmosphere, and do so until well after Sneak has gone at past 5am.



What proceeds that time is something more refined than this reviewer expected. Instead of smashing out various takes on his tried and tested upright house sounds, Sneak instead makes wise use of his 3 hours. Starting steady, fulsome and bouncy, he works through a mix of house old and new. As he increases the pace, each track enters the mix quicker than the next until, for the final 45 minutes of his set, tracks are barging in and out at frantic pace. By that time the rotund Costa Rican has also reverted to type – with raw jacking cuts, trumpets and eg Basement Jaxx party jams blasting out of the club’s solid Funktion One.

Although the usual problem with this venue persists as a stream of people necessarily barge through the middle of the dance floor to get outside for a smoke and a stretch, that’s no big detraction from what was a party which was as good as any we’ve been to in the last 12 months.