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The Local: Fuse @ Carling Academy

There’s been one of those annoying little notes flashing up on my Facebook for weeks: Fuse, promising thrills and spills and dancing grooves to the rhythm of the slightly aggressively named Audio Bullys. The image this conjoured, for me, was that of a weedy melody, quavering in the corner of the harmonic playground, while some pugnacious burly bass lines force him to give up his lunch minim. I went with an open mind. After a trek up the Cowley road to the Carling Academy (described by my editor as ‘our ‘local’ (well not really very local I know), it was a little disheartening to have to wait, tickets in hand, for a further 45 minutes or so. Even once the barricade of bouncers had been breached, queues again snaked throughout the night – the cloakroom, bar, and bizarrely, to go outside- strange because waiting in the foyer of the Academy is apparently ‘forbidden’. In taking over the Zodiac, Carling might have stapled some shiny new chrome to the loo doors, and attracted some larger acts, but staffing issues and these odd rules do little to qualify the price hikes (though the bar staff and publicity people were remarkably friendly).Back to the open mind. Wow. It was pretty much blown apart: Slide, Simple and Eclectric had done their job well. The Audio Bullies were fantastic – there’s something indescribable about a live dance act: special mention, goes, of course, to their sung remix of ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’. Electronica/techno Boys Noize were good: so good that it was almost impossible to scale the stairs to Nic Fanciulli.  When we did, the upper level of the Academy became a new zenith- again difficult to leave. In the end, the major problem of the night was this – everyone enjoyed themselves too much to experience all Fuse had to offer, just hypnotized and rooted to one room by their own dancing. Overcoming this ecstatic apathy had many rewards.– By Jack Orlick

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