DjRUM b2b upsammy @ FOLD
If a record pushes things forward, we follow its trail.
DjRUM is a one-man diaspora, drawing from techno, jungle, ambient, classical piano, and something else entirely that’s much harder to name. His most recent album, Under Tangled Silence, doesn’t sit neatly anywhere, moving from expressionist jazz to broken drum and bass, and it’s one of the most impressive and singular electronic albums of the year, pushing programming to a level of detail and daring that almost no one else is attempting.
DjRUM was announced to play b2b with upsammy at FOLD, a venue tucked into an industrial estate near Canning Town, built in the mould of Berghain and other post-industrial Berlin institutions: minimal signage, stern concrete, and a challenge for Sherwood since a sticker goes over your phone camera upon entry. No filming, no photos, no Instagram.
Without cameras, and the performance of self through a screen, people dance and stay present. Nobody’s filming the drop or proof they were there. This is what clubbing used to be, lost to the selfie economy, the backstage pass, and the muddy collapse of DJ and producer into lifestyle brand. FOLD is a return to the real.
Inside, the space is unflashy but deeply tuned. Natural light streams through tinted windows giving the event a temporal weirdness. Many were there for FOLD itself, with the club as the attraction, not the headliner. FOLD doesn’t even announce most of its line-ups in advance, and the mystique keeps things feeling very special.
Before DjRUM and upsammy touched the decks, Priori set the tone masterfully with a genre-agnostic glide through the midpoint between techno, house, groovy breakbeat, and space-conscious, bass-led soundsystem dubstep, ominous and precise. A Sunday afternoon rave, full of grown people who can clearly no longer throw themselves at Fabric until 5a.m. sweating together, eyes closed, hips moving, crowd locked. The space became a sauna. You could barely see the DJ because FOLD is designed that way. No spotlighting, no towering booth, and lots of fog. The lights swirl around the dancefloor, not the stage, with the decks low, and barely space for a few people to crowd to the front.
DjRUM & upsammy began their three-hour set with a wash of beatless texture, and within forty minutes we were already in 170+bpm acid jungle territory with another two hours to go. The magic of a b2b set is the emergent third energy, and you couldn’t tell whose track choice was whose, their styles interlocking completely fluidly, obliterating genres in a clatter of breakbeats, basslines, and endless, rolling kick drums. The rhythm was far from stable, but it was relentless. The force of it was joyously exhausting, bypassing the intellect entirely and hitting somewhere deep in the spine. I was off the dancefloor for no more than twenty minutes of the three-hour set total, and each time I stepped back in, it was barely five minutes before I had to close my eyes not because of the light, but because of the volume and speed of the sound. FOLD’s sound system is surgically precise, with every kick drum feeling like it’s been fired into the middle of your chest, and at this speed you have to close your eyes just to keep up.
This wasn’t house or techno or drum & bass with their formulas, expectations, structures and genre lanes, but compelling, screeching, throbbing music that was physically, cognitively and viscerally stimulating, and never boring.
FOLD was full but no one was fighting for space. Everyone seemed to instinctively find their groove radius, carving out small circles for expression. There was movement, but no mess. No posturing, just people inwardly immersed, and crucially no one looked ruined. No eyes rolling back, just groups of friends dancing. The crowd was beautifully mixed - queer folk, people of colour, younger dancers from across London’s subcultural spectrum, with everyone looking like they belonged. The locker system was flawless, and the staff were kind and welcoming. There was a palpable sense of safety, which is not a word I often associate with high intensity nightclubs.
For the full three hours, it was rolling kick drums and clattering amen breaks, a constant unbroken act of rhythmic propulsion with no room for thought, and no space to contemplate the day or even form internal sentences, all cognitive bandwidth spent just trying to process the sound and stay with it. Throughout the set, DjRUM scratched in jazz samples and ghost trumpets warped with delay. In the final 20 minutes, he began to layer Terry Riley’s Rainbow In Curve Air, a piece of radiant minimalist synth composition from 1969 and embedded it in the chaos. This wasn’t my first rave; I’ve been attending nights like this for nearly two decades, and a huge part of my career has been shaped by rooms like this, and a lot of it has been samey, formulaic, or even worse hostile. FOLD is rare. It’s exhausting. The focus is all on the music, and it’s seriously fun. The staff are friendly and safe, the space is thoughtful, the crowd is present and respectful with no ego and no chaos. If you want a real endorphin-soaked workout, go to FOLD.
But be warned, a DjRUM b2b upsammy set will take it out of you.
