Today, for any lover of electronic music, the name Fabric spells two things: wild London nights with fresh DJs at the height of their powers, and two series of compilations put together by the most gifted producers of their generation. By hanging their label off their venue, Fabric was able to follow UK clubbers home into their living rooms. Over more than two decades, this British brand has become a sturdy, reassuring presence. It has contributed immensely to music in the UK - and therefore to music all over the world.
Like any self-respecting institution, Fabric has never once changed its address: 77A Charterhouse Street, in Clerkenwell. It was among those old meat freezers that the whole story began, driven by two party organisers, Cameron Leslie and Keith Reilly. Annoyed by the "cheese" that was par for the course in the London clubs of the time, the pair decided to open a club of their own. It was an idea that they'd been chewing over for some time. "Back then, all the half-way decent clubs in London were playing terrible house music," Keith Reilly recalls. "So I started organising warehouse parties. It was all going well until we started getting too much police attention. So we started looking for a place, with one priority in mind: the best possible sound system. We were after somewhere that reminded us of the old warehouse parties, with the best possible sound and some fresh air. We spent £10 million, of which two million went on air conditioning." After two years of works, the club opened on 29 October 1999. "The first night was just mayhem. The police rang us up because the crowd massing outside was blocking off the road, they were going: 'Let them in or get rid of them!' There was this sea of clubbers and things kind of got out of hand. The works weren't finished. We were wondering if we could even open up. At 6pm, we still didn't have any electricity. We were really sweating and it was very chaotic, but in the end it went very well, and it just kept on going. I believe that since that day, we have never had a Saturday where the club wasn't sold out.”
Banksy and VIPs
That same evening, the king of street art Banksy turned up and left his mark on the walls. "That night, one of the Fabric managers saw that someone had done graffiti in the main room. He didn't realise what it was, or how important it was. He was so annoyed that he had the painting cleaned off the wall, and then he called the police on Banksy! I think that's the only time that Banksy has been arrested. He spent a few hours in the cells, but two years later he sneaked back to the club. He got his own back by doing a huge piece of graffiti there, which we've got framed. We've received some phenomenal offers from people who want to buy it."
Guests have the run of a gigantic club with three halls, including the famous Room One, with its "bodysonic" dancefloor with 450 bass transducers, which produce a bass sound that you can feel from your head to your toes. A real labyrinth, Fabric is disorienting not just for revellers, but for DJs too: "I played Fabric six times before I realised that it had a main room!" says drum'n'bass icon Andy C.
This labyrinth is quite a good metaphor for the club's musical approach, which embraces all the different styles of the UK’s burgeoning electronic music scene. Keith Reilly entrusts the Saturday night residence to his friends Terry Francis and Craig Richards, the club's "musical director". This constitutes one of the longest collaborations in history between a club and its DJs. Over the course of the club's nineteen years, the Saturday nights have become legendary in London. The duo book the hottest acts on the scene, who are delighted to be able to play in this temple of electronic music. Regulars include reliable names like Adam Beyer, Regis, Luke Slater, Apollonia, Ben Klock, Dave Clarke, Dixon, Ivan Smagghe, Jamie Jones, Marcel Dettmann, Romanians Raresh and Rhadoo, Ricardo Villalobos, Seth Troxler, Steffi and Tama Sumo. This is cutting-edge, underground music, which can sometimes surprise foreign clubbers who come to visit, for whom superclubs are synonymous with commercial music. “At Fabric, we don't book DJs to draw crowds", Keith Reilly says. "We book them to play new tracks. That's the idea. I don't care whether people are dancing or not, I want to hear good music. A lot of DJs do the job for the wrong reasons, like girls or money... And they forget the most fundamental thing: a DJ is someone who loves music and wants to share it."
Many tourists who are not necessarily well-versed in techno have beaten a swift retreat from the club, as have certain VIPs and royals who have taken Fabric for a standard celebrity club. "We refused entry to Prince Andrew and Prince Harry, because they didn't understand what we were doing here. They were just turning up to be seen. We also said no to Madonna. I got this really arrogant and condescending phone call off her manager: 'Madonna is coming Saturday night, there will be ten bodyguards, she'll need this, this and this...' I said no. If she wants to come, she won't need security, because no-one will be coming up to her. We had Bono and Keith Sutherland and absolutely no-one bothered them."
A legendary series of compilations
Weekends in the club are split up into two “theme” nights. Saturdays are Fabric, with Craig Richards offering more of a house and techno line-up. Friday is named FabricLive, for “sound clash" nights that mix up different genres, with ragga, grime, breakbeat, dubstep, drum'n'bass. On the bill for these nights you will see names like David Rodigan, Alix Perez, Chase & Status, Congo Natty, Erol Alkan, Goldie, Groove Armada, Kode9, Loefah and LTJ Bukem. Two years on from the opening night, Fabric and FabricLive were the names chosen for twin series of compilations produced by the club/label. "Not everyone can come to Fabric", explains Geoff Muncey, the former manager of Fabric Records. “So we wanted to set up a series that allowed people to get an idea of what was being played in the club.” The first volume in the Fabric series was therefore compiled by Craig Richards, in 2001. He put together a mix that tells the story of "the tripped-out innocence of a Sunday morning in Room One”. The second volume was the work of Terry Francis, and then two legends came on board: the pioneer of New York house Tony Humphries on Fabric 04 and the legendary BBC DJ John Peel, for FabricLive 07. After them came the first German, Michael Mayer (November 2003, Fabric 13) and the first Frenchman, Ivan Smagghe (July 2005, Fabric 23), joined by compatriots Agoria and Brodinski in 2011 and Apollonia in 2013.
In 2005, FabricLive was entrusted to Diplo, who found acclaim with his debut album Florida on Ninja Tune and his mixtapes Hollertronix, made alongside his colleague DJ Lowbudget. DJ Mag judged this mix "the best representation of Fabric's eclectic approach to dance music”. The artist who would become known as Major Lazer compiled Cybotron, Juan Atkins' first band, Cajmere's Percolator, Aphex Twin, M.I.A., The Cure, the Brazilian baile funk trio Gaiola Das Popozudas and Outkast, blowing the cobwebs out of a lot of ears in the process. Two years later, a third French name made it into this pantheon of English music, but Justice, who had just released their album Cross, flopped miserably. Their tracklist, which included music from Daniel Balavoine and Julien Clerc and Who Loves You by Frankie Valli – hardly cutting edge tracks – was turned down by the British label. Ed Banger would finally post the demo online in 2016, under the name Xmas Mix...
But 2007 was marked above all by Ricardo Villalobos' Fabric 36. Villalobos made an unexpected splash by exclusively including his own works on the compilation, effectively making his mix a solo album. The Chilean explained his decision: "It is all my productions[...] I think you always have to find a new way to introduce your music and present yourself. I chose Fabric because it’s the perfect label for me to do this on. I really prefer for it to be treated like a normal mix, with no hype. Every time you do an album and then you do the next one, people start to compare how the music is different, why you did it on this label and not that label, they try to define it, 'the other album was better,' 'there's no hit like 'Easy Lee' on it'... and so forth. It's exhausting, really." Three years later, in 2010, FabricLive 50 by D-Bridge & Instra:mental recalled the club's essential role in developing drum'n'bass and other breakbeat-based music. Meanwhile, Shackleton followed the Chilean's lead on Fabric 55. Villalobos had judiciously pushed the English dubstep producer into the limelight; he also remixed the Englishman's gripping 19-minute Blood on My Hands. Shackleton served up 22 tracks all of his own, making an 80-minute mix of uncommon intensity. This record proved a landmark in the history of the series, like the fabulous FabricLive59 from Four Tet in 2011, which moved fluidly from Caribou to Villalobos, and from Burial to Floating Points, showing that making a compilation is an art in itself.
2014′s FabricLive 75 by Elijah & Skilliam demonstrated the grime scene’s fresh vitality. The last few years have allowed Fabric to reward deserving DJs like British Ibiza star Cassy (Fabric 71 in 2013), the Swiss veteran Deetron (Fabric 76 in 2014), the pioneer of the English acid house scene Baby Ford (Fabric 85 in 2015), or the Russian Nina Kraviz, with Fabric 91 in 2016. That year, Fabric seemed to have reached the end of the line, when its license was revoked following the death of two teenagers by overdose that August. But thanks to a massive mobilisation and a 111-track compilation that helped raise funds, the club ended up winning its fight and was able to reopen its doors from 6 January 2017. The releases kept coming: after Fabric 97 by Tale Of Us and 98 from Maceo Plex, the legendary British DJ Sasha was charged with putting out number 99. In 2018, volume 100 of Fabric was concocted by the historic Craig Richards, Terry Francis & Keith Reilly, and issue 100 of FabricLive was put together by the dream duo of Burial and Kode9. This signalled the end of the two series, which were replaced by Fabric Presents, whose first volume, released in April 2019, was the work of Bonobo, who was succeeded by the German veteran Kölsch, New Yorkers Martinez Brothers and the new Belgian star Amelie Lens.