ny sushi vs gatecrasher: who rules Sheffield?

Today, ladies and gentleman, we put two of Sheffield's nationally renowned nights in a ring and see which one survives, giving props to two others in passing.

In the NY Sushi corner: weighing in at nine and a half stone and the same again in vinyl is Mr. Tobias Flinch, funky mf proprietor and purveyor of the grand piss take.

To understand why Sushi is infinitely superior to that overpriced school disco we have to look at the history of dance music, from the slave songs, to gospel, to funk, reggae, disco, hip hop, techno and drum and bass. Sushi understands this continuum: I've seen both Afrika Bambatta and DJ Hype play there. Related to this is the rich variety one can find on Fridays at the Unit: one recent night featured a reggae room, an acid house room and a drum and bass room.

But* without even mentioning music we can show how Sushi is superior: the dress code comparison. I've seen Mitsubishopp on his way to the Crasher, and he wears shoes my dad would reject for being old fashioned, purely so he can get in: at Sushi you where what the hell you like. *And if you think that Gatecrasher is the best place to drop a pill in Sheffield you're badly mistaken: The Arches, with its mental acid techno and trance is far superior for MDMA consumption and no one dances round their hand bag.

Out like Paul Van Dyk,

Tobias

* I can start sentences with but and and if I feel like it, all right?

In the Gatecrasher corner: weighing in at around 35 stone of flesh and the same again in Class-A drugs: Mitsubishopp

My return argument could easily beat this lame attempt by this D'n'B fool but I'm gonna save half of it until he tries to dig himself out of his hole. That reminds me, The Chemical Brothers (Dig Your Own Hole reference) headlined the NY Sushi 1st Birthday at the Unit. That same night I was at Gatecrasher (31st October). Not only did I see the aforementioned Brothers in Crasher before their gig, but Tom and Ed CAME BACK to Crasher after their gig to large it in "Britain's best club" (Muzik Magazine).

Has NY Sushi ever had to turn away 2,000 people because the club was simply too full to let them in? Gatecrasher has a capacity of 1,320 and one night in November had to turn away more than it's capacity due to public interest in the event. And before Tobias gets arsey about well who'd go back to that place after queuing for x hours and then being told to go home - I WOULD, 3 days later I spent nearly 50 quid on a ticket for their New Years Eve event. And again before he gets arsey, 50 quid well spent. If you were a world famous DJ and you worked every weekend god sent wouldn't you be a bit pissed off about having to work on the best night of the year rather than larging it yourself? The 50 quid goes towards paying them, it's not the club making huge profits, it's the DJ's charging a fortune. As an example, Millennium Eve at the end of this year (surprisingly) GC is charging 100 dabs per ticket to an event held at Don Valley Stadium. There are 8 world class DJ's playing in 2 huge arenas covered by the largest tent in the world (Millennium Dome doesn't count). 25,000 people are going to this gig but think of the overheads the organizers have got to deal with. Don Valley Stadium can't be cheap to hire. Cream of Liverpool and Ministry of London are charging 250 dabs per person for gigs on their own clubs - where are the overheads there?

I can't really reply to Tobias' call about where D'nB comes from cos I don't really care about the roots of house and trance, all I know is that trance is a derivative of house born in Germany, The Netherlands and England, the main originators of this being Paul Oakenfold (UK) and Paul Van Dyk (Germany). House itself comes from Chicago, Europeans love it, Americans don't understand it. (Oakey's going over there next year to show them what's what).

Gatecrasher's resident DJs also provide a formidable force to beat:

• Matt Hardwick was a student in Sheffield when he gained his residency at GC. Since then he's helped bring the club from strength to strength to it's worldwide reputation. He usually opens the club as the "warm-up" set but by the time he's finished everyone's dancing (unless they're cabbaged in a corner due to drugs) and the main room is a seething mass of sweating clubbers with their various toys, flashy things and Mitsubishi signs on T-shirts, faces, sprayed into hair and on "TUNE" cards all of whom are going mental. Everyone wants him to stay on with his mad mix of uplifting trance and house, every record he pulls out of his bag seems to be better than the one before. One of my friends recently had a photo printed of him in Muzik mag with a TUNE card saying "IT'S ANOTHER FUCKIN' STORMA" written on it, this is the typical opinion of anyone listening to a Matt Hardwick set.
• The next resident to play is usually Judge Jules. How many NY Sushi residents have the primetime Saturday night slot on Radio One? I don't really need to say anymore about this bloke but I shall anyway: The Judge in now in his early thirties but it doesn't stop him from knowing how to play to a crowd predominantly aged from 18 to 25. His mix of banging tunes blare out to a now mental crowd most of whom either have massive smiles on their face or are pulling stupid faces (gurning) and chewing packet upon packet of gum. By now there are 5 minute queues by the water fountains of people taking a short break to fill up their water bottle and have a quick fag, the cubicle queues have now normally alleviated slightly. The dance floor is just a heaving as ever, people offer you bottles of poppers every so often. "The Judge won't budge", at least not until his set's finished.
• Scott Bond often finishes the night off with the last set offering the perfect mix for about 5am where a lot of people are beginning to get tired, people are running out of pills and poppers come out again. Scott Bond knows how to play the perfect breakdown and wind it back up again just when everyone really wants him to. The mad tunes and classic stormers are still out there so everyone can go just as mental as before but the slow bits are timed so everyone can rest for a few seconds before it all goes mental again. He knows the classic finish to the night, the shouts for more generally go on for 15 to 20 minutes and if everyone's really noisy he'll play up to 3 more massive onslaughts of booming bass-lines to some of the biggest tunes around.
• Sonique's shit, I'm not gonna talk about her.

Only this mixture of pure talent could possible create the atmosphere that GC has. The clubbers and the DJs combined create the right chemistry to make the Ministry Magazine "Friendliest Club" of 1998, well OK, that and a few Mitsis. I've never been to another club where you can talk to anyone you choose to, where people will offer you water and poppers or even pills/speed/charlie in the middle of the dance floor. Everyone there is out to enjoy themselves and they'll do almost anything to make sure you do too. There aren't many clubs where people go and blatently advertise drugs weith Mitsi signs everywhere you look.

Of course even Gatecrasher wouldn't be where it is today without it's guest DJs, Sasha and Paul Van Dyk doing live sets on the internet, the likes of Paul Oakenfold, Seb Fontaine, Tall Paul, Tom Wainwright, John Kelly, Pete Tong, to name but a few. The GC and Radio One gig at Lotherton Hall on the 19th of June looks to be a huge one with Sasha, Tong, Rampling, Morillo, Oakenfold, Fontaine, Liam (Prodigy) Howlett and of course Jules, Hardwick and Bond being just a snapshot of who's on.

Many people have heard horror stories about the GC dress code: Whether you wear a binbag or a Vivienne Westwood dress you can get in, the code there is for individuality and originality so Ralph's or Laurent's aren't cool but T-shirts with flashy electric things on them, stilts (honestly, I've seen them a few times) or spray painted hair is cool. "The man in the suitcase" has been seen there, for those of you who don't know who this is he's literally a bloke who's cut leg, arm and eye holes out of a suitcase and then climbs in it and goes clubbing. Just don't look like you're going to your local meat market and you should be OK.

You can get to the Gatecrasher web site or it's host's site using these links:
www.Gatecrasher.co.uk
www.TheRepublic.co.uk
NY Sushi probably doesn't have one

The Umpire's summing up statement: All right let's judge a few points here

1. Gatecrasher draws bigger crowds than Sushi
2. Gatecrasher has more famous names than Sushi
3. Sushi has more variety than Gatecrasher
4. Sushi does not have any dress code, there are no blacklisted labels

Which of these mean more to you is your choice, dear reader, but essentially it comes down to whether you prefer your beats pulsed or broken, scratched, beatjuggled, MC'd and transformed. In passing I must give an honourable mention to Dropping Science, who put on a rather ace session last night (9/6/99), featuring the only female scratch DJ I've ever seen, DJ As If, totally ripping up the decks. No one offered me any drugs, but I did have a hip hop bonding session with this dreadlocked bloke, when we both rapped along to Nas' rather classic "Half time".

So, to get back to the point, there are some ace nights in Sheffield, whatever your preference of music, and therefore I declare the winner to be: people who live in Sheffield. How's that for diplomacy?

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