Three a.m. in the pedestrianised thoroughfare of Waterloo Place, and the heart of the city throbs to the beat of club culture emanating from Fusion. In the year since it opened, Fusion has put Derry on the eclectic clubland map and established it as a centre for the young clubber. While this part of the city has long been associated with rioting youths, the "young people of today" are much more likely to throw a party than an airborne object. For the shiny sophisticates of Derry's youthful beau monde, teenage angst is decidedly passe.
Fusion's Saturday night music selection is a mixed bag of house, filter disco and funky soul, that ensures a variety of rhythms from trance-like absorption to tight dance beats. While combats and gilets are de rigueur clubber clobber elsewhere, Fusion's no-sports-wear policy has given rise to fantasy style attire. In clothes that demand attention, their faces exquisitely a-glitter in the trippy light, the self-consciously bold and beautiful congregate here to dance the night away in wild abandon.
Monday night's student disco trawls the full spectrum of chart hits past and present including 1960s, 1970s, grunge, metal and hip-hop, while Friday's over-18 chart disco attracts a younger crowd in ever-growing numbers.
Fusion has transformed the old Embassy building into one of the most popular youth venues in the north-west by attracting a number of premier league DJs from the international circuit. Catering for a crowd of 800 to 900 every Saturday night, it is proud of its status as the only club outside Belfast to have secured a 4 a.m. licence.
As some of the better-known names take their club nights on the road and guest appearances on promotional nights enable top-flight artists to bring their deck wizardry to venues beyond Belfast; a club scene in the midst of the city's multitude of pubs has been discovered.
Sleuth and DJ Chris Cargo, having established a name for themselves in Belfast's prestigious Network Club, embarked on a province-wide tour that concluded in Fusion last month with the German DJ Hooligan on decks. Their aim, to take a club night on the road, proved highly successful and challenged Belfast's domination of the scene. Further down the Strand Road, The Earth Club occupies a prime location in Derry and has secured a noticeably older clientele than Fusion. Within staggering distance of the Magee campus, it attracts legions of student types as well as the natives. A strictly non-house club, its local DJs spin a selection of funk, soul and R&B that has clubbers regularly dancing their socks off of an evening.
As the world's top producers continue to plunder the treasure-house of past hits, Earth's 1970s revival Friday night looks likely to keep pulling the crowds in. The disco renaissance continues to hold clubs everywhere in thrall. With retro glam outliving its life expectancy, aided in no small part by the plethora of disco classics set to thumping dance beats, the manufacture of floor-fillers has opened up what seems like a bottomless bag of mix tricks.
Hosted by resident DJ Denis Frisco, Earth's claim to be the biggest Tuesday attraction in Northern Ireland appears uncontested. It certainly has an intimacy that many of the warehouse-style, multi-floor venues lack, and regular patrons extol its unique ambience, though the atmosphere belies a crowd capacity of 1,500. In its short life Earth has received numerous accolades and distinctions in the industry and is noted by the RUC drug squad as the cleanest, safest club in Northern Ireland.
Earth celebrated its second anniversary with a big bash at Easter, including an appearance by the American DJ, David Morales. He is now a DJ at the Mezzanine in Wolverhampton, which was "voted top night club in the land" in the current issue of DJ magazine, while the litany of stars who have utilised his production skills in the past reads like a who's who in international pop - Jamiroquai, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Candi Statton, M People . . .) With a sequence of tracks that had the crowd enraptured, Morales revealed himself as a true doctor of spin. Cheesy competitions and mystery prizes added to the mayhem and mirth on the night and with tickets sold in Belfast, Enniskillen, Armagh and mid-Ulster it was, as expected, one of the biggest nights of the year. In a follow-up spectacle, Soul II Soul's Jazzie B is Earth-bound on Saturday and the return to the club of such a charismatic performer will only heighten the fever. The Southern Comfort Jazz Festival on May 22nd-29th finishes up in Earth; it is the headline event of the week-long programme.
Earth also functions as a showcase for contemporary live music and the success of David Holmes, Divine Comedy, Therapy, Ash and others, has invigorated what had become something of a jaded scene. Derry's Head Rock Valley Beats, having cut their musical teeth in various local clubs, command a popular following throughout Ireland and have come to the attention of the wider music industry in Britain. Ash's latest chart single is remixed by the Derry group and they have also worked with Soul II Soul. Such associations are sure to raise the profile of the band chosen earlier this year as the best new act in the Oh Yeah Northern Ireland Music Awards. With their star in the ascendant, HRVB look set to become the latest addition to the North's canon of popular artists.
But it doesn't end there: Trevor Nelson is the real jewel in Earth's crown, for they have secured him on a monthly residency. The man behind Radio One's Rhythm Nation and MTV's Lick is to broadcast live for these shows from the Strand Road venue in the near future. Nelson's stature in the music industry is colossal. In a recent magazine study he was named the fifth most influential person in dance culture and "the most powerful person in black music". Over the course of a 12-year musical odyssey that led him from fringe warehouse parties to pirate radio and into mainstream exposure, Nelson has acquired a fine ear for combining commercialism and credibility. On his recent compilation album, INCredible, he enlists the talent of some of the best artists in R&B and hip-hop, to produce an imaginative selection of tracks that includes Lauryn Hill's Sweetest Thing, Arethra Franklin's A Rose is Still a Rose, Gwen McCrae's 1980s boogie classic Funky Sensation and the soulful pop sound of The Brand New Heavies.
The best DJs, of course, are in tune with the vibe on the floor and retailers and club-managers have had to learn from their example. As consumers, clubbers are an articulate and astute lot, aware of their lucrative status. Clever marketing campaigns reflect this and the issue of gold cards by some clubs, including Earth, is an acknowledgement of their reliance on regular patrons.
At the other end of the scale, teenagers have increasingly sought to establish their own subcultures: creating domains in which they can exercise control. Dance culture, youth media and computer youth channels are directed at these microworlds, which in their deepest recesses are perceived as esoteric. The a-vocal, linear rhythms of house and hard-core defy lyric analysis, and the hidden world of club culture remains exactly that.
This has bred stereotypical attitudes, in Derry and elsewhere. Misunderstanding and opposition are likely to result in the growth of an underground club scene and encourage the outdoor raves seen in the suburbs recently (though exorbitant entrance fees to clubs which attract the very young is also a big factor). Hedonism, whether real or illusory, has always been the banner of youth culture - but the house music magazines and the specialist industry that feed this image are the real benefactors.
The very existence of such a sophisticated club culture in Derry shows that, in this age, nowhere is peripheral. True aficionados of club sounds will not be disappointed by the feast of aural delights over the coming months, and with further celebrations ahead the party atmosphere is unlikely to wane. Experimental mixing, sophisticated techfunk and big names are impressive - but the true stars of these clubs are the fashionable, narcissistic young things who frequent them. If you haven't already been drawn to this clubland oasis, be warned; you might just find that you've died and gone to Earth.
