by Yan Well another night of the strange beast that is Perversion has rolled by leaving people hot sweaty and exhausted once more. By my reckoning (which is usually wrong) this is the 8th Perversion at Electrowerkz and it is still as popular as ever. For those who have never been before, this is certainly not the hardest of fetish clubs, there is no real dress code and the venue is even shared by the excellent heavy metal night of Sanctum, but it all still works in a weird way and is a great fun night out.

As I stated in my review of the last Torture Garden (26/7/03), the Electrowerkz is my second home and I’ve been a proud member of the Slimelight community for over ten years now. As a result, this makes Perversion a little strange for me. On the one hand this is my home from home, I know most of the faces here the music is familiar and all the staff recognize me. That said it’s not the same thing, its all slightly askew and off center.

For the readers who have never been to Perversion or even the Electowerkz venue I’ll explain a bit further. For the better part of 15 years, this club just around the corner from Angel tube station has been the center of the world’s Goth and Industrial music scene. It has been the place where the black dressed outcasts of the clubland have hidden away in their own little sub-genre. It is one of the original venues for Torture Garden and has played host to many other fetish clubs over the years. It is a bare old warehouse, which lacks even the basic amenities of a normal club. It’s cliquey, dirty, loathsome and as much like some Hollywood idea of a vampire hangout or cyberpunk dive as can be achieved through the Darwinian forces of having the children of the night as your clients and no money to spend on it.

I also love it there. Some of the best moments of my life have been spent on its dance floors (I just can’t quite remember a single moment with any great clarity though). It’s where I met my fiancé as well as the majority of my friends, and it will always hold a place in my heart (a bit like a tumor).

Anyway back to the point - Perversion that night. As has been the case for the last all but the first perversion the venue was packed. Two doors were in operation, the first for the metal crowd as they would get to see two free bands, but would not be admitted into the special event club area of Perversion they would only have to pay £7 (£5 with flyer) and unfortunately would have their music gets turned off at 5am. The other door is for Perversion for which a £10 cover charge is asked but for those with the foresight to buy a ticket in advance, or for those who are members of Transmuters a reduction was on offer. No dress code is enforced on the night and whichever club you choose, your movements are not restricted really.

Once inside club goers had the choice of three floors the bottom one being the performance area for perversion, the middle one being the Perversion main floor, chill out area, dance floor and market. The upper floor being the Sanctum live show, dance floor and café/chill out area. All these spaces were packed by 12. the main stairs also featured a girl in a climbing harness and a g-string suspended from the ceiling, it was her task it seems to pelt club goers with a variety of breakfast cereals?! Don’t ask me why, it’s a fun little bit of what make perversion different and wacky, but is it fetish? Does it turn you on? Did it turn her on? Why cereals? No answer was ever given just a rain of Choco-Flakes.

Once inside the main Perversion floor a quick trip to the cloakroom and the bar was in order. Both are inexpensive with bags stored for £1.50 and cans of lager etc for around £2.50. The music care of DJs Andy (Judas) and by LA’s Bruce Perdew was a slightly more chilled version of the regular Slimelight sound. As usual the sponsors –Transmuters had a stall there along with two stalls selling collars and wristbands in rubber and UV plastic respectively.

The crowd here is a very mixed bag from the usual Slimelight crowd out for a Friday night, some of the fetish scene and the more adventurous of the metal crowd from Sanctum. This might have produced a level of tension but instead just gives Perversion a friendly eclectic feel. Everyone was just 'up' for a good time and the atmosphere was very warm and friendly. It was not however a fetish atmosphere.

While there are pole dancers, and these are certainly some very talented and beautiful ladies, they are just there to entertain not to titillate. All the clothes stay on and although there are various pieces of dungeon furniture set around the club these are never really used. Perversion is a club that cannot work out what it wants to be, it is part burlesque, part nightclub and part fetish club and by being not wholly any of these it appeals to a very broad base. It is certainly a very fun night.

Francis who runs the club always puts in a great deal of effort to make each night unique and to have a different piece of entertainment. Tonight it was a human-fly-bouncy-castle-assault course with Mark the acrobatic dwarf and his enormous strap on to hurry you over the various obstacles. This was inspired idiocy and a great laugh, I have no idea who could think up something so weird to put in a dungeon area except Perversion and it one of the reasons I love this place. Apart from the pole dancers, mistress Kazayu and her lovely assistant gave fetish scene regular Alex a very special birthday present in the form a very good display of Japanese rope bondage and candle torture that left him all tied up, and provided a welcome distraction for all those trying to dance.

A word has to be said about Sanctum at this point to, they have two live bands each night and although I hung up my denim jacket and retired my Iron Maiden albums many years ago I still love this music. The bands were merely OK on this occasion. Perhaps others would disagree with me judging by the huge mosh pit that was in evidence when we arrived. The rest of the DJ sets were a real mix of classic old school tunes and this new metal these young types seem to enjoy, and a great blast. I like my house, I love techno, but it’s really nice to have a fetish club play something different than just dance music.

Overall Perversion just continues to grow, which is something of a problem because space is what the club lacked that night, the next night is scheduled for 12th September and I can only wait to see what bizarre manner of special performance they are going to display this time. So if you want to just hang out, have a dance and a chat, watch beautiful pole dancers and listen to metal then this is your night, if you want the depths of extreme fetishistic sex and depravity then it isn’t.

Yan