Nightvision presents: Feel My Bicep
La Belle Angele 24/10/14
La Belle Angele was dressed to impress on her first night back on the scene since 2002. A faulty fuse box in the building above the club caused 13 buildings on Cowgate and their vertical extensions on South Bridge to burn to the ground. It took over two days and 150 firefighters to quell the blaze, and many historical buildings, including the original site of the Gilded Balloon, were lost forever. In typical Edinburgh style, it took 12 fumbling years to build a well-intentioned but totally inadequate replacement: an Ibis hotel and a Costa. Fortunately, there’s enough soul downstairs to discount the South Bridge eyesore entirely.
Bicep and Leon Vynehall, the headliners for the night, brought back-to-back sets of heavyweight techno and rumbling bass. Club promoters Nightvision did an excellent job of complimenting the DJs, focusing more on the sound quality inside the room than the lights. There was nowhere to sit down, the bathrooms were flooding, and the bar was understaffed and expensive, but there was plenty of space to dance, and odd geometric tiles climbed from the wooden floor up the pillars in the hall, giving the club the atmosphere of the inside of an eco-warrior spacecraft. The tunes were mercilessly loud, and the three captains of the night drew from a seemingly endless playlist of classic 12″s and mp3s to facilitate the party. These were the kind of song that elevated La Belle Angele above Cowgate and into the stratosphere, despite being held in a bunker underneath an Ibis and a Costa.
