Weekly raving at Heaven and Carl Cox first-ever gig at Space in Ibiza: how React Music led me astray

I was working in a Covent Garden restaurant back then, where the staff were all bang into techno, and there was already a culture of relentless raving through the week. Midweekers like Knowledge at SW1 or Eurobeat 2000 at Turnmills meant one or more members of staff would have come virtually direct from the night before pretty much every shift.

It was from this hedonistic petri dish that someone must have suggested – or insisted on – a team visit to Garage at Heaven after work one Friday. I can’t remember much, obvs, but I have a feeling that after the very first trip I realised I’d found my place. How foolhardy it was to think any January resolutions would really be able to tame that already compelling weekly ritual of dance floor homecoming. Ridiculous.

React owners James Horrocks and Thomas Foley had taken on promoting this established weekly night at the famous Charing Cross venue, which sprawls out under the railway arches. They had assembled a weekly line-up of DJs playing this hard-edged sound, alongside the occasional blockbuster guest, and it was all just fucking ace.

Heaven has always been renowned as a gay club, but it has also been the home to broad church of groundbreaking parties and crowds, from early Fabio and Grooverider drum & bass breakaway night Rage to the psychedelic festival vibes of Megatripolis, the zippy-hippy Thursday night raves promoted by Primrose Hill resident and visionary, Fraser Clark.

The crowd at Garage was high-percentage homosexual, but beautifully accommodating of our rag tag bunch of all sorts. I wasn’t new to clubbing, having spent most weekends over previous years exploring Camden’s smorgasboard of night delights, starting out at places like Electric Ballroom (as I celebrated here), graduating to raves at the Astoria, then getting properly blown away by the power of early jungle at regular trips to AWOL over at Islington’s Paradise. I was new to gay clubbing though, and nowhere had ever given me the huge group hug – united by unashamedly epic breakdowns, shoulder-twitching basslines and euphoric horns ‘n hooks – that I felt every week down at Garage. Instant regulars, we were, of course, accepted by the gay crowd as honorary ‘strays’, some of our number even exhibiting the kind of fleeting gender fluidity that is now par for the course, but was quite the eye-opener – for all – back then.

Away from the grim pressures of alpha male clubbing, with all its inherent bravado and zero sum focus on pulling girls, I was suddenly free to be me; Heaven’s dancefloor the ideal canvas for my early 20s self to play by my own rules. As with all the best nightlife experiences, it was pivotal stuff, which accordingly changed my life.

React’s Garage regulars ruled the roost. If you are reading this as someone in your 20s today it might seem odd, but hearing the same resident DJs in the same space, week-in week-out, was exactly what we wanted; Mrs Wood, Rachel Auburn and Blu Peter, every Friday like clockwork in the main room. Dropping our cheeky halves upstairs, perfectly timed to descend into the cauldron of the main dancefloor as tunes like Misjah and Tim’s ‘Access’, Marmion’s ‘Schonenberg’ or Josh Wink’s ‘Higher State of Consciousness’ kicked in – along with everything else.

It was our secret society, a sweatbox of sin, (where actual members of the church could always be found in bar area, gladly ready to wash the bare feet of any tired ravers who considered a brief moment of repentance over a cigarette). And as with anything so clearly, compellingly brilliant, it wasn’t going to be contained.