Charlie Pinhey
Music journalist & online sub-editor for CLUNK Magazine based in Bristol. Fumbling around on social media trying to tell people about my interviews and reviews. Follow me @charvawritesstuff
Big Squeeze Soul turn Number 90 Hideout into a vinyl-fuelled celebration, spinning Northern Soul, funk, and rare grooves to a packed crowd
I recently read ‘Tim Book Two: Vinyl Adventures From Istanbul To San Francisco’, written by The Charlatans’ frontman Tim Burgess. If you haven’t read it, the premise is that Burgess asks a collection of his friends to recommend LPs for him to buy whilst he travels the world on tour. The book details his, and other people’s, deep love for crate digging and how the simple act of listening and sharing can lead to friendships forming between people over a mutual love for the same sequence of sounds.
I was reminded of ‘Vinyl Adventures’ at Big Squeeze Soul’s show in Hackney Wick on Friday. Watching the London duo dip and weave behind the decks, as they mixed their collection of 7- and 12-inch vinyl, played out like a thousand timeless moments seen in record stores up and down the country: of two guys listening and sharing music.
The duo, Archie and Tyler, grew up on tales from their parents of nights out in London where they would move to soul, jazz funk and rare groove records, which led to the pair becoming frustrated with the rigidity of the current nightlife on offer in the city. Big Squeeze Soul began to form.
The pair began playing house parties for their friends and the more they played, the bigger the parties became. Fed up with seeing the carpet constantly trampled, they moved their sets into venues, and began playing regular shows across London. Fast forward a few years and Big Squeeze Soul not only have a significant presence in the capital but also across Europe and New York, playing venues with a capacity of a few thousand.
Yet, despite having navigate their inevitable upward trajectory, Big Squeeze Soul’s approach to their show on Friday was wholly democratic. Instinctively they’d spin on their heels to rummage through their shared crate behind them, sensing a change in tempo or beat was being telepathically requested from the crowd. I watched them cheerily sign to each other at several points in the night, non-verbally agreeing what should be queued next for the next section.
The duo darted between Northern Soul stompers, funk, Afro-Latin and left-field disco tracks. Sometimes, a record would fade into another one imperfectly, creating half a beat of obscurity. That half-beat might be considered “wrong” by the cut and paste standards of a digital DJ’s, but it allowed the crowd to bask in the uncertainty of what was coming next and peel their shoes from the sticky floor.
If anything, the anti-mechanical nature of Big Squeeze speaks to the very human nature of vinyl, which is, in turn, the very spectacle of the show. Not the DJ’s and their decks, but the happy people moving to the beat. As the duo wrote on the flyer for their very first club night ‘Nice music. Nice people. Come through.’
Towards the end of their show, I looked up to Hideout 90’s balcony and saw someone dancing alone standing on a sofa, silhouetted by a rich red light behind them. They were alone but moving so freely; they looked as if they were elsewhere, elegantly twisting between beats. Big Squeeze Soul say they want their parties to feel like home.
Mission accomplished.
Photography by Finn Carlow